“The lorry came to take me away the next morning. Grace was there in her dressing gown to say goodbye, clutching Little Manfred to her. This was the last time I saw your mother.”
He paused then and I thought that was the end of his story.
“Mum always said that Little Manfred was very special to her, her favourite toy,” I told him, “that I had to look after him, but she never told me why. And she was really upset too, when Dad trod on him and broke the wheel; not angry, just upset. She was crying, and I didn’t know why. I do now.”
“But still you do not know everything, not quite,” Walter went on. “I should not be here today without my good friend Marty. It was his idea, coming back here, this whole trip. He said it would be good for me, good for both of us, and I think he was right. What was it you said, Marty? ‘You have to face the past if you are going to understand it’, something like that, wasn’t it?’ And now here I am, back on this beach where it all happened. It is a place I have dreamed of so often, and of the farm too, and Grace and Manfred.”
Alex was up on his feet suddenly, his football in his hands. “I’ve got the bestest idea. You’ve got to come home and see Mum and Dad, and then you can see Little Manfred again too, can’t you?”
Walter looked at me. “I am not sure,” he said. “Your mother, she might not recognise me. It is a very long time since she has seen me – nearly twenty years!”
“I think Walter is right,” said Marty. “We can’t just drop in uninvited.”
“You are invited,” Alex insisted. He wasn’t taking no for an answer. “I invited you, didn’t I? Come on!” And he was pulling Walter to his feet.
The two men did not know that once Alex got an idea he wanted to do something, then he just went ahead and did it. So that’s how we found ourselves following Alex up the path from the beach. He dribbled the ball all the way, scoring goal after goal through every open gateway we passed, Mannie chasing after every one – twelve of them before we got home.
“Twelve-nil! Twelve-nil to England!” Alex shouted as we came into the farmyard, and then he did his Nobby Stiles act all over again, skipping and larking about, and that’s why he tripped over in the cow muck, which served him right, though I didn’t say so. It didn’t bother him though. He just picked himself up and raced on ahead of us towards the house, shouting for Mum to come out. Moments later she appeared at the door, a lamb under one arm, and a feeding bottle in her other hand.
“What is it?” she said. At first I wondered why she wasn’t having a go at Alex about his filthy hands and filthy trousers. But she hadn’t even seen him. She was standing there stock still, gazing at Walter. For a few moments she and Walter simply stared at one another, and said nothing.
Then Walter said, “Grace? It is me. Walter. You remember?”
“I know it’s you,” she told him. “I’m just trying to believe it, that’s all.” She was rooted to the spot.
I could almost see her thinking about what she should do. When she made up her mind at last, she came walking towards us across the farmyard. Walter was holding out his hand to her, but instead of taking it, she handed me the lamb, and gave Alex the bottle to hold. Then she turned to Walter and threw her arms round him, and hugged him, eyes tight shut, but they couldn’t hold in the tears.
That was when Dad came out into the yard from the calf shed. Alex ran over to him, holding up his mucky hands and showing them off. “Mum’s crying,” he said. “And I fell over, Dad. Look!”
Part Four
AN HOUR OR so later, we were all sitting round the kitchen table – Alex and me, Mum and Dad, Walter and Marty – with Little Manfred on his three wheels, centre stage on the table now, and Mannie curled up in his basket in the corner of the room, keeping an eye on us all.
There were scones and jam out on the table and Battenburg cake. Alex had hardly stopped talking since we got back home. He was telling them Walter’s whole story, in his own gabbling and garbled way: how we had met up on the beach, and particularly about Walter and Marty going to the World Cup Final, all about the battleships that had sunk in the war, how Walter had been a prisoner of war, and how his friend Manfred had been killed down on the beach, and how he was the one who had made Little Manfred. I could hardly get a word in edgeways, and neither could anyone else, until the moment came when his mouth was so full of cake that he had no choice but to stop talking.
“Isn’t it supreme?” I said to Mum. “How we met them there by accident, and if we hadn’t found them then, you wouldn’t ever have met Walter again and we wouldn’t be all having tea together? I mean, how amazing is that?”
No one seemed to know quite what to say. Even Alex was silent. For a while there was only the tinkling of teaspoons on teacups. Mum offered Walter more tea. She’d hardly said a word since they had met out in the farmyard. I think she was still trying to take it all in. Then she said, “I remember so well that last time you were sitting here, Walter, when you gave me Little Manfred. He was on the table, just as he is now. It was the evening before you left, I think, the same day Manfred was killed, wasn’t it?”
Although she was trying to smile, I could see there were still tears in her eyes, and in her voice too. Dad must have noticed this as well, because he changed the subject fast.
“What d’you think of the match, then?” he asked Marty. “Was that a goal or wasn’t it?”
“Oh, for goodness’ sake, Harry,” Mum said, pulling herself together again and blowing her nose. “What does a stupid goal matter? This is what matters: Walter being here, us being together after all these years, and with Little Manfred too, even though, thanks to you, he’s only got three wheels on him.”
“You keep saying you’re going to mend him, Dad,” said Alex, “and you never do. And you’re the one who busted him in the first place.”
Dad was making his usual excuses about things being a bit busy out on the farm, how he’d get round to it as soon as he could. That was when Marty spoke up. “I have an idea,” he said. He turned to Mum. “Maybe I could mend it. Grace, do you have a sewing box by any chance?”
“Of course,” she said.
“You can’t sew on a wheel,” Alex scoffed.
“Well, I think maybe I can,” Marty said, “in a sort of way. You’ll see. I’ll do it after tea.”
Then I asked Mum something that had been on my mind ever since I’d heard Walter’s story. “How come you didn’t tell me before about Little Manfred, or Manfred, or about Walter? You never said anything.”
She thought a while before she spoke. “I suppose because it was so sad, Charley,” she said. “When you were very little, I thought it was just too painful to tell you. And then later, well, it was always too awful for me even to think about, let alone talk about. Manfred was such a gentle man, so kind to me. But now Walter is here, maybe all that sadness is over and done with.”
“There’s one thing I still don’t get about all this,” Dad said, helping himself to another piece of Battenburg cake. “How did you two find one another again after the war was over?”
“Luck, sheer fluke, wasn’t it, Walter?” Marty told him. “I was at Liverpool Street Station only a couple of years after the war ended – 1947 it must have been, I think – out of the navy by this time, and back in civvie street. I was on my way to work in the office – I was in the insurance business in those days, in the City. And there were these men standing together in a huddle on the platform, waiting for a train by the looks of them. I knew at once they were German prisoners of war – they were wearing their navy-blue battle dress. One of them was sitting on a suitcase and he was looking right at me, frowning at me he was, and staring, as if he knew me. I recognised him at once. It was Walter.
“We hardly had a moment to talk, but it was long enough for us to shake hands and exchange addresses. It was all we had time for, wasn’t it, Walter? Then you went off on your train back home to Germany and I went to the office.”
“I remember that you gave me a packet of ci
garettes again too!” Walter said, “And ever since that meeting we have been writing to one another, every couple of months. These letters were very important to me. Coming home after the war, after so long away, it was not so easy. I think I was like a different person. I was a stranger to my family. It was Jutta and Inga, Manfred’s family, who saved me. In time, my friendship for Jutta turned into love, and we were married together a couple of years after I got home. It seemed the most natural thing to do, not to take Manfred’s place, no one could do that. But to be with her, it felt right for us. And now my goddaughter was my stepdaughter.
“But even with this new family I found there were many things I could not talk about. I could write about them in my letters to Marty. It is difficult to understand, but even in the short time Marty and I were together on board HMS Dorsetshire, seeing what we had on that terrible day, there was a kind of bond between us, I think. Maybe it is because both of us had our nightmares – the sinking of those ships, the Hood and the Bismarck, the horror of it all, the loss of friends. No one else at home was interested in all this. Why should they be? They wanted only to find enough food, to keep warm, to build their lives again. For them it was a war they just wanted to forget. For us it was still a war we needed to understand.
“So over the years, we became friends through our letters, didn’t we, Marty? And the more we wrote to each other, the more we found there was much we had in common. We both of us liked fishing, and football – different teams, of course: Manchester United and Bayern Munich. And then, less than a week or two ago, comes – ‘out of the blue’, as you say it – the invitation from Marty to come to England. He has two tickets for the World Cup Final, England against Germany. We must go there together, he said. Jutta said I should go. Inga said I should go. And what Inga says I do!
“So I came, and here I am. It is true, we lost the game in the end. But I tell myself, it is only a game, that next time we will win, maybe. I want to tell you that when I look round this table I know that coming back here – to our English family, Manfred’s and mine – was better than any match could ever be, even if we had won it. Like you say, Grace, this is more important, much more important.
“When Marty said I should come here to Suffolk, he said it would help to lay the ghost. You were right. Manfred would be so pleased to see us here, all of us together, with Little Manfred on his three wheels. Looking at him now, he is just what Manfred said he was, I think, ‘a dog of peace’. At last, I can feel that it really is all over now.”
“Which reminds me,” said Marty, turning to Mum. “He needs a new wheel, doesn’t he? I’ll need that sewing box of yours, Grace. Do you mind?” He reached out and picked up Little Manfred. “We’ll soon fix you up,” he said, and then he disappeared with Mum into the sitting room.
There was a lot of whispering going on in there, and the little tap-tapping of a hammer too. Only a few minutes later, Mum came back in, holding Little Manfred triumphantly in both hands. He had four wheels – well, sort of.
“Little Manfred is all mended,” she said, beaming at us. She put him down in the centre of the table again. One wheel was a cotton reel and looked just about the same size as the others, only it wasn’t red. Alex sorted that out later, crayoning the new wheel a bright crimson. But best of all, when he pulled up the string and ran with it, Little Manfred didn’t fall over. He didn’t even wobble. His new wheel worked a treat.
And that was it. That’s how I found out why Little Manfred was called Little Manfred.
But – though I didn’t know it then – that wasn’t the end of the story, not quite.
Twenty-five years later
TWENTY-FIVE YEARS LATER I went off on a very special trip to London. Lots of people travelled down from Suffolk with us, a full coachload from the village, including my whole family, Mum, Dad, my own children too, all four of them. My brother Alex even came over from Canada, from Toronto, where he lives now. But sadly, not everyone could be there. Walter had died the year before. Jutta was there, though and so was Inga. They came over from Germany especially for the event, and brought lots of friends and family with them. Marty was there too, old and frail now, walking stiffly and slowly, but he said he wouldn’t have missed this for the world. I had to point out to him rather apologetically, that his cotton-reel wheel had been replaced, so that all four wheels were identical now.
“If you ask me, I think he looks much happier with four good legs,” he said, smiling. “Legs, wheels, cotton reels – what’s the difference, so long as they work, so long as you can get along. When you get old, that’s important.”
Inga was the one who got to carry Little Manfred up the steps into the Imperial War Museum, and Mum helped her to set him down in his new home, a display case right in the centre of the great hall where everyone could see him. There was a short welcoming ceremony to mark the occasion, and a speech or two.
We were all standing around afterwards, some of us still a bit tearful, when I noticed a mother and daughter crouching down beside the display case. Both were peering in at Little Manfred.
“What’s that sausage dog doing there?” the girl asked.
Her mother was reading the caption beside the showcase, and doing her best to explain. “It says here,” she began, “that the dog is called Little Manfred. He was made by two German prisoners of war, Manfred Heide and Walter Kreuz, when they were staying on a farm in Suffolk after the war. They were working on the farm and helping to clear nearby beaches of barbed wire and mines. It has been given to the museum in their memory.”
“But why did they make it? Who was it for?” the little girl asked.
“I don’t know,” said her mother, “but it says that someone’s written a book about it, with pictures. It’s called Little Manfred. Maybe we can go and find it in the bookshop. We could read it, couldn’t we? Then we’ll know the whole story, won’t we?”
As they walked away, the little girl was looking back over her shoulder. “That little dog, I think he’s smiling at me,” she said.
Afterword
THE GERMAN BATTLESHIP BISMARCK was named after the nineteenth century statesman Otto von Bismarck, first chancellor of the newly unified German Empire. Bismarck was launched on 14th February 1939. At the time, she was the largest battleship afloat – more than 50,000 tonnes when fully loaded – and the pride of the German fleet.
On 19th May 1941, under the command of Captain Ernst Lindemann, and with a crew of 2,200 men, Bismarck set out from a port in the Baltic into the North Atlantic. She was accompanied by the heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen, on a mission to intercept and destroy Allied merchant shipping. The British Home Fleet were alerted and on the evening of 23rd May, the cruiser HMS Norfolk spotted the two German ships on course for the Denmark Strait between Greenland and Iceland. Britain’s newest battleship HMS Prince of Wales and the older battle-cruiser HMS Hood altered their course in order to intercept her. In a brief action the next day, Hood was blown up and sunk. Out of her crew of 1,418, only three men survived. In response, there was a determined effort to pursue and destroy Bismarck, who had also been hit but managed to get away, making for a port in German-occupied France for repairs.
For a time, contact was lost between Bismarck and her pursuers, but on 26th May she was sighted again. A torpedo strike was launched against her by Swordfish aircraft and she was hit by a single torpedo, which jammed her rudder and steering gear. She was now unable to manoeuvre, and the Royal Navy closed in for the kill. Pounded by battleships HMS Rodney and HMS King George V, and harried by destroyers, Bismarck eventually sank at 10.39am on the morning of 27th May 1941. Her end is still a matter of dispute. Did she scuttle herself, as surviving members of her crew claim? Or was she sunk by torpedoes from HMS Dorsetshire? Either way, in the words of Admiral Tovey who had led the hunt against her: “Bismarck had put up a most gallant fight against impossible odds, worthy of the old days of the Imperial German Navy, and she went down with her colours flying.”
Out of her crew of over 2,
200, only 116 sailors survived. HMS Dorsetshire had picked up eighty-three sailors (one survivor dying on board the next day) and HMS Maori, another twenty-five; but then, the warning went out that there were U-boats in the area and both ships left the scene, abandoning the rest of the crew to the sea. Later on, a German weather ship rescued two more survivors, and the submarine U-74 another three.
THE FIRST GERMAN NAVAL PRISONERS OF WAR in Britain during the Second World War were the crew of the submarine U-27 which was sunk on 20th September 1939. They and others were shipped to Canada in 1940 when a German invasion of Britain was expected. It was not until 1944, after D Day, that large numbers of German prisoners arrived in Britain. In 1939 there had been just two prisoner of war camps in Britain, but by the Allied victory in May 1945, there were 600. It was said that almost a quarter of Britain’s workforce in the immediate post-war years was made up of prisoner-of-war labour. At first, supervision was very strict and only good-conduct prisoners were allowed to work outside the camps. But gradually conditions relaxed, with families even inviting German prisoners to spend Christmas and other holidays with them.