Elizabeth's Search

By G. K. Robinson

A British nurse on holiday in Germany just prior to the second World War meets a German officer. Their relationship develops and they intend to get married. Unfortunately, the second World War intervenes.
Both are determined to find each other after the war. The girl, Elizabeth, searches for him with the help of a group of American army personnel.
The German officer, Carl, evades capture by the British army in Italy. The British army wants to interrogate him about his services in the German army, both before the war and during the war.
Carl is helped in this evasion by the men in his unit and eventually reaches Germany, his home.
He goes looking for Elizabeth, whom he knows is with the British army medical services.
The interrogation group in the British army assume he will make for his home, so they search for him in that part of Germany. During the course of their search, their man accidently discovers a group of war criminals trying to escape from Germany and is held prisoner.
Carl, at the request of the occupation authorities, helps to bring the group to justice.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Austin Macauley Publishers
• Release date: Aug 28, 2020
• ISBN: 9781528983617

G. K. Robinson

Educated in Australia and England, the author started travelling the world as a young man and essentially never stopped. He has served in the Royal Navy and the Merchant Marine prior to his long-time career as an accountant in the field of international telecommunications. He has lived and worked in every corner of the globe. Whilst none of his books are autobiographical, they reflect his deep understanding of human nature and frailty.

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Fourteen

About the Author

Educated in Australia and England, the author started travelling the world as a young man and essentially never stopped. He has served in the Royal Navy and the Merchant Marine prior to his long-time career as an accountant in the field of international telecommunications. He has lived and worked in every corner of the globe.

Whilst none of his books are autobiographical, they reflect his deep understanding of human nature and frailty. He is the author of A Time to Live and The Munich Pursuit.

Copyright Information ©

G. K. Robinson (2020)

The right of G. K. Robinson to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with section 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

Any person who commits any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

ISBN 9781528983594 (Paperback)

ISBN 9781528983600 (Hardback)

ISBN 9781528983617 (ePub e-book)

www.austinmacauley.com

First Published (2020)

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Chapter One

A faint hint of dawn was showing in the east as Elizabeth Austell, Matron of the 305th Casualty Clearing Hospital, opened the mobile hospital ward tent-flap to get a breath of fresh air after a night on duty.

They had been halted in the position where they were now for two days.

As she stepped outside from under the tent canvas structure of the hospital, she smelt the wet foliage of the trees and bushes they were close to, mainly fir.

They were halted at Bad Oldesloe in Northwest Germany, not far from Lubeck. The 10th Armoured Division they were attached to was about ten miles ahead, in Lubeck itself. Rumour had it, they were going to swing southeast themselves and link up with the Russians.

The 10th Armoured Division’s chief medical officer followed the thinking of the medical services in the Second World War that the less distance a wounded man had to travel for specialist treatment, the more likely he would survive. So he, therefore, had his Casualty Clearing Hospitals as close to the frontline as safety would allow, just short of the front line and had female staff there as well.

Elizabeth looked to her right, to the southeast, as she stood breathing in the sharp dawn air and could see flashes in the sky almost continuously, obviously, the Russians. The British Brigade fighting units had first stopped just south of Lubeck and then moved on to the city, or what was left of it, on the Baltic coast, and her Casualty Clearing Hospital was about ten miles further south of them now.

Forty miles south of their position, near Luneburg, Field Marshall Montgomery was waiting for news from a group of German senior officers, eventually consisting of Admiral von Friedeburg, General Kinzel and a Major Friedl surrendering on behalf of the German Forces in north-western Germany, Holland and Denmark on the 4th May 1945.

As the war in Europe was drawing to a conclusion, the allied armies were deep in the heart of Germany and expecting to meet-up with the Russian armies in the near future. The British 21st Army Group, under Field Marshall Montgomery, had pushed into northern Germany and reached the Baltic and northern Holland, mainly to stop the Russians flowing too far westward.

The 21st Army Group had landed in Normandy and reached their final position after breaking out of Normandy via Rouen, Amiens, and Tournai and through Belgium.

The Group consisted of the British Second Army, commanded by General Miles Dempsey, and had been tasked to reach the Baltic, then possibly turn north into Denmark and the First Canadian Army, commanded by General Harry Crerar which had been tasked to swing left into northern Holland. The 2nd Army’s final route depended on the position of the Russian forces to their east or right.

The British Second Army was comprised mainly of seasoned Divisions who had fought from 1939 on the outbreak of war plus several newly formed Divisions put together after Dunkirk, but now hardened after the campaign in Europe. A mixture of armoured, infantry and artillery units and the Division the hospital had been attached to from Normandy was the 10th Armoured. A unit that had fought in the desert, Italy, Normandy, Belgium and now northern Germany.

The Division was now commanded by Major General Anthony Gilligan and consisted of a Reconnaissance regiment of armoured cars and infantry-armoured carriers; three tank regiments and one infantry brigade of three battalions now very much under strength; in addition, ancillary support of anti-tank units, anti-aircraft units, supply and repair units and the Casualty Clearing unit.

After crossing the Rhine, the 2nd British Army had angled to north with the 10th Armoured on the left-hand side or northern side of the 2nd Army.

Since crossing into Germany resistance had been sporadic, mainly either very old or very young men.

When first the 10th Armoured and the accompanying infantry had run in to these pockets of Germans, the Germans fought, inflicted casualties and would then surrender.

One of the spearhead regimental commanders decided, after a few brushes with this type of German defence, his tactics would be simple. As soon as he hit a pocket of Germans such as this, he stopped and sent forward an emissary under flag of truce, usually a German prisoner with the message, The German could either surrender after a few token shots or put up a resistance, and prisoners would not be taken. The choice was theirs.

The effect was amazing and casualties on both sides had been reduced to a minimum. This was passed from one spearhead unit to the next to take over and it worked like a charm.

The odd group of fanatics who were determined to fight for the Fatherland were occasionally met and fought, and died either in the ensuing fire-fight or as they tried to surrender after killing and wounding some of the attackers. The spearhead units of the Division, the Reconnaissance units had come past two of the German concentration camps a few days earlier and been appalled at the state of the inmates, so, therefore, the liquidation of a few German fanatics didn’t leave them sleepless nor did the destruction of a few German houses from where the resistance sometimes came.

Elizabeth stood and watched the fingers of the dawn gradually light up the sky, and the details of the edges of the forest around the clearing started to become clear. She turned and looked southeast, and could still see the flashes of the battle raging somewhere down there. She heard voices and turned, and saw a group of raggedly dressed males coming from the forest and move towards the group of tents. She guessed they would be released prisoners or slave labourers and she walked towards them slowly, thinking they, maybe, were seeking medical assistance. As she did so, two of the Staffordshire infantrymen who had been assigned to the hospital as a security detail moved in between the men and the tents stopping them.

She heard raised voices and one of the groups pushed at one of the Staffords. His comrade clubbed the man quickly with his pistol and then pointed the gun at the others, motioning them to pick their comrade up, at the same time, calling out and several more Stafford’s came running.

The group pick-up their fallen member and went back to the forest. The two Staffords, a corporal and a private came past her.

Ma’am, stay close to the tents and tell your girls, those woods are full of refugees of all nationalities wanting women and loot. I’m off to see my commander and suggest we clear the woods.

Elizabeth shivered and decided to go back into the hospital. As she walked slowly back, she wondered about the men in the forest, and from there, her mind went back to before the war in 1938 and the German officer she had met on a trip to Germany with her family. He’d visited them in England and she had been to meet his family in Germany, spending a month there. She wondered if he was still alive but where, maybe he was not far away. If the war hadn’t intervened, she knew they would have been married. The last she’d heard from him, he was over in the eastern part of Germany, shortly before the Germans attacked Poland, and she’d had a letter from him brought over by a tourist who’d happened to meet with him in a hotel and they had got to talking. The German officer had eventually explained to the English tourist that he couldn’t send any mail to England and asked whether the tourist mind carrying a letter back for him. Both were aware that they were breaking the law, particularly, the German who could be summarily shot for even asking.

Elizabeth had replied in a very guarded letter, not mentioning the one she had received but was not sure if it had been received by the German.

Elizabeth handed over her charges to the Deputy Matron, Peggy Wilson, a woman about her age who’d been with them since Normandy and wearily went to her tent to sleep. It took her a while to get off to sleep, her mind wandering over the possible whereabouts of the German officer, what sort of a war had he had and where. She’d seen the results of the German war machine in both Italy and Europe, and the cruelty inflicted by the Germans, but was utterly convinced in her own mind that her German wouldn’t have participated in any such actions.

Elizabeth awoke mid-afternoon, and after showering and dressing, she went in to the Mess tent to see if she could find a cup of tea. Talking to the steward, she found that the latest rumours were that the war was over and Field Marshall Montgomery was about to sign an Armistice with the German commander somewhere near Hamburg. The Division had been told to hold its current position, in defence and not advance either east or north-west.

Afterwards, she went into the ward and talked to the Ward Sister, the ward was nearly empty, they had around ten soldiers, two officers and a German soldier. These were too ill to move; the rest had been sent down the line to the base hospital located near Hamburg. The ward sister, Helen Preece, had also heard the rumour about the war being over but the senior medical officer in charge of the unit, Lieutenant Colonel Tony Marsden, had visited only a short time ago and hadn’t heard anything other than rumours.

That evening in the Mess tent, prior to supper, there was a certain amount of hilarity and excitement with all types of rumours abounding.

She was sat at supper that evening with Tony Marsden and one of the young surgeons, Henry Tolput, a young surgeon slightly older than herself who’d been with the unit as long as she had. She was well aware that if she at all gave him encouragement, he would be quite willing to marry her. This type of approach, apart from ones of sheer sexual orientation, she had become adept at fending off, always at the back of her mind was Carl, the German.

Lieutenant Colonel Marsden had formed their unit in 1943, in Wiltshire; Elizabeth had joined it on her return from Italy after a period of convalescence.

Tony Marsden had been in France in 1940 and had returned via Dunkirk, spending time in the military hospital just outside Portsmouth, then moving to Scotland to a small medical unit in Oban. In late 1943, he then had been asked to put together a group and form a Casualty Clearing Hospital to be part of the 10th Armoured Division’s administrative tail. Good people were hard to get by then and he was damned if would put up with second best, so he set about searching the medical scene, both military and civilian, for good people. He needed a good experienced matron and heard about Elizabeth from a friend whilst on leave in London. Apparently, she’d just returned to England after service in the Middle East and Italy for a period of convalescence having been on the hospital ship, ‘Otrano’, which had been sunk just off Salerno in September 1943 and she had not long returned to England.

He checked her service record and liked what he saw, so he sought her out whilst in London and she agreed to be matron.

As they sat the three of them that evening, Tony Marsden, sipping a whiskey with Harry Tolput, and Elizabeth with a glass of wine, their thoughts went back over the years to the outbreak of war.

Prior to the outbreak of war, Tony Marsden had been in medical practice in London and he’d joined the Territorial Army in 1936. He was called up in August 1939, and went over to France in late 1939 with the British Expeditionary Force and had been stationed as a surgeon in the base hospital in Arras.

The German spearhead appeared to be striking straight at Arras and so the British medical units followed the BEF into Belgium, only to be cut off when the Panzers reached the coast at Abbeville.

He and his unit, because of the nature of their work, base hospital staff, were told to fall back to Dunkirk and he and the unit arrived there in time to be some of the first to be evacuated.

On his return to England, he was assigned to the military hospital near Portsmouth which then received casualties, brought back either via Dunkirk or from the French ports further west.

Tony was then sent up to Oban and was medical officer to a large group of the newly formed commando units for him to gain experience on his own with a small unit.

In late 1943, he was recalled to London to the Medical Directorate, and asked to form a Casualty Clearing Hospital in keeping with the new thinking of the Army Medical Service and given a free hand to pick his staff.

He searched for good doctors and nurses with experience of wounded personnel, but was stuck for a matron. Whilst there were good male matrons around, he wanted a woman who was young enough to withstand the rigours of field life, but also to have gained experience in the cauldron of war.

He was in his club in Pall Mall, in December 1943, and talking to an old friend, a doctor like himself also in the Army. They had not met since early 1940 whilst in France and so spent an evening together bringing themselves up to date with their travels. Tony went on to explain what he was doing and how he’d got most of the personnel but wanted a matron, female if possible, because he would also be having some female nurses apart from males.

His friend was a little pensive and then said,

I don’t normally do this, but I was with a woman in Egypt, a nurse, and I met her again in Sicily and on the Otrano, that hospital ship the Krauts sank, she got ashore from that debacle and spent the next week or so on the beachhead at Salerno under constant fire, helping the wounded and had to be ordered off the beachhead when she suffered a minor wound. At first, she flatly refused to go, and eventually, the military commander said he’d have her forcibly carried off if she didn’t go. All rather amusing, and the medic she worked with on shore, when he heard the order, said he wished the general luck with that one. But, eventually, she did go with a recommend for a medal.

Tony took a note of her name, and the next day, went off to the QAIMNS HQ and asked to see her record.

The matron-in-chief (Equivalent Army Rank Brigadier) was rather hostile; the person in question was earmarked for a routine staff job in England. Tony Marsden laid on all the charm he could muster and was given permission to approach the woman at her home in London; at that time, she was still on convalescence leave. Prior to seeing her, he had a look at her service record and was duly impressed.

He telephoned first, and spoke to her and agreed to call the next morning. He found the house and was met at the door by a slim, rather pale-faced, attractive blonde girl of about thirty, who invited him in. The house looked as if it had been badly damaged at some time in an air raid and was barely habitable like a lot of London homes. The girl was very pleasant and Tony quickly came to the point of his visit. She agreed immediately and asked where she should join, he demurred at first, wanting to know if she was fit but she convinced him, and they agreed he’d pick her up in two days’ time and take her to his unit.

He went back to the QAIMNS and arranged the paperwork to have her appointed to the 305th Casualty Clearing Station under his command. During the next few months, up to D-Day, he was very impressed with her professionalism, steeliness when needed and her ability to get the best out of people, both male and female. He came to rely on her totally and was amused when some of the junior medical officers, even some of the 10th Armoured Division officers, tried to make advances and all were firmly but politely put in their places at arm’s length. He wasn’t aware of the reason for the various rejections he saw from time to time but assumed it was because she had an interest somewhere else.

The truth was that she had never ever forgotten the German officer.

Prior to the European Invasion of June 1944, the 305th were with the 10th Armoured Division based in Wales, and took part in many exercises between September 1943 and June 1944.

The unit landed in Normandy D-Day plus one and set up their hospital just inland from Juno Beach, just aside from a road junction at Courseulles. The hospital was shelled once or twice, mainly because it was quite close to the beachhead, but once the main front moved on, the shelling ceased.

Tony Marsden noted his first summing up of her character was confirmed in those first few days on the beachhead. She was tireless in her organising and following through the treatment of casualties and their evacuation via the beach. Several times, she went out with a batch of casualties via landing craft to make sure the safe arrival on the hospital ship of a particular badly wounded case during her time off. On duty, of course, she couldn’t leave the Clearing Station.

They followed the 10th Armoured through to Brussels, following the break-through and set up a hospital just north of Brussels where the 10th were engaged further to the north of them in some heavy fighting.

Tony noted, during the campaign, Elizabeth always paid a lot of attention to any German wounded brought in and talked to those who had knowledge of English, also she used a smattering of German herself. He presumed she was interested from a medical point of view and was trying to gain a vocabulary of German medical terms.

Elizabeth’s mind that evening was also running back over the last six years, first, her first meeting on the railway station at Offenburg with Carl Zuicher, when he had come to her assistance to rescue her from the attentions of a group of drunken soldiers.

They had met again later that day at Freiburg rail station.

She had given him their address in London and extended an invitation for him to visit, should he be in London anytime, and was surprised in December when she received a telephone call to say he was in London. They met, and he came and stayed with them for a few days, he’d been sent to London, accompanying General Guderian to a demonstration of some weapons on an invitation offered by Vickers, the armament manufacturer.

He returned on his own in January with an invitation for her to go back to Germany with him to meet his family, which she did. His home was near Ulm midway between Stuttgart and Munich in the Wurtemburg district.

She went back to the large house on the outskirts of Ulm, a pleasant town dating back to the Middle Ages with lovely old medieval buildings. She met his mother, father and brother, Hans. She stayed there with them for two weeks towards the end of January, and she and Carl often wandered along the bank of the Danube River, which ran through the town. They discussed marriage, and he agreed to come and visit England again in the spring of that year, 1939, and ask her parents for their approval.

She returned to England a little apprehensive about going to live in Germany, should they get married. The atmosphere was very forbidding and armed men seemed to be everywhere, grim, stern-faced, black uniformed men. Carl didn’t say much, although she sensed his disapproval of a lot of the treatment being meted out to the Jews and he kept emphasising that these black uniformed men were not part of the Wehrmacht, his German Army.

In all events, he was unable to visit England in the spring, although they kept up a weekly correspondence with each other.

She suspected he was part of the occupying force of Czechoslovakia.

She had sounded her parents out, and whilst her father was a little cool about the idea of marriage, he didn’t say no but asked her to think twice about where she would like to live, either England or Germany.

Carl finally got to England in June and formally asked her parents, who both agreed on them being married the following year. Carl could only stay for a week and had to report back to his unit in Eastern Germany.

As the war clouds gathered, Elizabeth became very despondent and could see that it was going to be impossible for them to get together whilst he was in the German Army.

He wrote in late July, saying there might be a gap in his letters but for her not to worry, and finally, in late August, she received the letter brought over secretly by a tourist.

It contained a hint that it might be a long time before he saw her again and that he would still want to marry her.

She replied to his home address with a very guarded letter, saying she would not worry and they were fated to meet again. She said she still wanted to marry him and would wait for him.

By late August, it was clear that war would break out between Germany and England, should Germany invade Poland, so Elizabeth decided to join one of the medical services of the country and finally decided she’d join the Queen Alexandra’s Imperial Military Nursing Service where a lot of her contemporaries had gone.

In her