Page 31 - My Story

My Story: GERMANY 1963 – 1973

One evening Peter came back from the office and asked how I would like to move to Holland,
where the Hunter Douglas head office was. Oh, yes, said I, always looking for adventure. So, we set about
learning Dutch. I called the Dutch embassy and got a nice lady who was willing to come to our house two
or three times a week. She gave us some basic phrases and started us reading, “Het Achterhuis”, the Diary
of Anne Frank. Within a very few weeks the office decided they did not want Peter in Rotterdam but
rather at a subsidiary called Vista which operated out of Emmerich in Germany. We dropped the Dutch
lessons and Peter took a crash course in German. He was sent over ahead of us to start the job and find
somewhere for us to live. He reported that Emmerich was not the choicest of towns, but it was just across
the River Rhine from Kleve, where we had eaten the delicious cake and Kleve was a more upmarket place.
Good, we decided to house hunt in Kleve.

Meanwhile, back in London, we were enduring the coldest winter on record and all three children
caught measles, each one a week after the other. Despite the central heating our pipes froze, and we
were without water for a couple of days – so there I was, alone with three sick children and no water while
Peter struggled with a foreign language and new job in a new country. Of course, we had been assured
that EVERYONE spoke English, but everyone spoke English the way we spoke German, hello, goodbye and
happy birthday!

Helen and Susan in 1963

The Bach family rallied and sent Elke over to help me. By the time she arrived the girls were
convalescing, and I would find them together on the big bed in a darkened room playing poker, or some
similar card game, gambling away their treasures.

Elke, bless her, stayed for weeks. She gained about twenty pounds on apple pie and a daily ice
cream from the truck that came to the house and she was the biggest help, enabling me to go and get a
few German lessons before our big adventure.

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