She knew she would be spending a sleepless night worrying whether to take Jannika and Johannes – who both sounded so happy playing with their grandmother – back to the school at all.

Chapter 25

25

LOTTI

Dresden

Night of 13–14 February 1945

For the second raid, there is no warning – yet the roar of aircraft engines is even louder than before. Then the boom, boom of explosions begins and even the cellar is rocked on its foundations. First the ceiling starts collapsing, with brick and plaster dust everywhere so that we’re choking from the cloud of particles in the hot, airless cellar. Scores and scores of people who’d been above ground – perhaps trying to save their possessions from the inferno raging at street level – now crowd into our makeshift shelter.

Mutti is worrying that if we continue to lie down, we’ll get crushed. ‘We have to get up now, Lotti. There are too many people in here.’ As she says the words, she’s gasping, struggling to breathe. ‘K-k-keep the shawl over your face. We need to dampen it with the bathwater again.’

But we can’t get through the crush to the bath. Within just a minute or so, a flood of humanity has now gathered here, shoulder to shoulder, so we can barely move. In the first raid, the booms of the explosions and the pressure rush after each had felt like slaps on the back of my neck. Now it’s like each one is crushing my lungs, and I’m fighting for breath. With each explosion, the foundations of the building shake so much it feels they will give way. The candles are blown out again so we are plunged into darkness, save for the orange glow from the cracks in the heavy cellar door. We don’t have to ask what that glow is – we know it’s the glorious city of Dresden burning to the ground.

As the blackness envelopes us, and the explosions seem not to end, people start screaming, thrashing about in the crush, not caring if they hurt their neighbour, desperately trying to secure some extra space so they can expand their lungs and try to gasp in more of the stifling air.

Then a cry goes up from near the doors. ‘The ground floor of the block is on fire.’ Instead of cramming together underground to escape the fire and explosions above, now there is a crush to try to get out before we too are consumed by the flames. There is no chivalry here. No ladies first. It is each man, woman, and child for themselves.

We finally make our way back to ground level but there is no real respite. The explosions have faded away along with the drone of the aircraft engines. But out here – if anything – everything is worse. Some people – confronted by the wall of flames – try to turn back, to re-enter the cellar.