Page 39 - My Story

Moers to expect us. Peter and I drove the thirty kilometers to Moers blindly, tears streaming down our
faces. The staff there were waiting. They took the tiny baby and had him in an incubator and on a drip
within minutes and there he stayed for three weeks. We called the Bachs and they came and collected
Susan and Hilary to join their growing family, Gudrun now had Katya who fitted in between Hilary and
Toby, and kept them for a month. Helen had school but stayed with the Werners after school until I got
over there to pick her up. I travelled to Moers every day and was just able to sit looking at my baby
through a window but slowly, slowly he recovered and began to look more like a baby and less like a
wrinkled little old man. Peter came with me at weekends and finally, after three weeks we were able to
take our baby home.

He was a thumb sucker. I think the nurses at Moers had introduced that to him. He was happy
as long as he could suck his thumb. And he was a happy baby. Helen, at six and a half would change him
and give him a bottle (well sterilised) and when the other two came back they wanted to try to do it, too.
Our lovely big pram had been left in England and we acquired a smaller one. We would set out for the
shops or the park or kindergarten spread across the whole sidewalk with everyone holding on to either
the pram or a hand.

Toby in 1965

Two of our friends, the Werners with three girls and another family with three boys were so
thrilled with our having produced a change of sex that they immediately became pregnant. Of course,
Inge produced the fourth daughter and the other couple another son!

I had almost forgotten how we met the Lindeckes but remember now. I was in the shop
downstairs and heard an English voice. It belonged to an Englishwoman who was married to a serviceman,
an English serviceman, at the RAF camp in nearby Goch. I immediately invited them to come and have
drinks at our house. Big mistake because they drank and drank and drank, she especially. He was quite
nice, as I recall but certainly had to deal with an alcoholic wife. I believe he eventually left her. Anyway,
they invited us to some RAF evening function and introduced us to this charming German couple, Eva and
Heine Lindecke. They both spoke excellent English, which didn’t matter anymore as our German was OK
by then – never perfect grammatically but we could hold a conversation. Heine was an officer in the
German air force, Eva a nurse and they came from Berlin. During our stay in Germany we came to regard
people from Berlin very favourably. They seemed less small minded and had a terrific sense of humour.
Maybe this is true of all big city dwellers?

We immediately became best friends with the Lindeckes. They had three children, Anna and
Michael who were twins a little older than Helen and Kai-Uwe, Known as Puzzi, who fell somewhere
between Susan and Hilary.

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