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    Going Home
    Going Home
    Going Home
    Ebook48 pages31 minutes

    Going Home

    By Folkert Cramer

    ()

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    About this ebook

    I must have looked a fright having traveled for days, not shaving, or having at my disposal basic hygiene. My uniform, or what was left of it, and my foot gear would have done the average scarecrow proud.

    Some things you can fix and some things are what they are. On the second day I passed some farmer who recognized me and the stories of my survival and my homecoming took on legs of their own.

    Could that be my little Heide in the distance? I felt the fatigue of days on the road and the nightmares of traveling through enemy lines.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherAuthorHouse
    Release dateMar 20, 2012
    ISBN9781468559309
    Going Home
    Author

    Folkert Cramer

    Folkert Cramer was born in Germany in 1944 and is the father of two children. He grew up in the Peace River Country of Northern Alberta after his parents immigrated to Canada in 1953. This novel is as much about preserving the past as it is a testament of survival and the horrors of war. It’s about the spirit of survival and my father’s ability to overcome the greatest of odds. This book is his legacy.

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      Book preview

      Going Home - Folkert Cramer

      Contents

      FOREWORD

      ABOUT THE AUTHOR

      In my eyes, my father was the greatest.

      Folkert Robert Cramer

      FOREWORD

      The following stories were provided to me by my father during several hunting trips. The journey he took to stay out of Soviet prison to stay alive was one of epic proportion. It covered roughly a thousand kilometers and took approximately one month to complete, marching on foot from northeast of Berlin to Czechoslovakia to Borstel, West Germany. The events covered are accurate, and the sequence of events and timeline has been reconstructed by me to the best of my knowledge.

      After the war, my father started a successful heating fuel supply business. He survived a devastating bankruptcy before immigrating to Canada with my mother and five children, where he started over on a homestead at age fifty. This was no small feat at any time. He was tragically killed in a farm accident at the age of fifty-seven.

      To Patrick

      All my love, Granddad

      My breathing became more measured, and the star-like explosions in my head were fading. A quick examination of my body confirmed that there was no sign of damage to the torso. The bullet that was meant for me had passed through my camouflage tunic. Six more inches to the right, and the life of Captain Robert Cramer would have become another wartime statistic. Missing, whereabouts unknown, last known orders were to hold the Russians at the Oder, a major river that was the border between Poland and Germany.

      Time to go! I had no idea if the men in the cottage would take it upon themselves to follow me in order to enact retribution. The incident that triggered this latest brush with death was a search for food. Nothing unusual, in that it had been weeks since we could remember having eaten anything more than a raw, cold potato or other consumable items that were left behind by the scores of refugees and retreating German soldiers.

      My group of men, attempting to escape the Russian-held territory, had shrunk down to four, partly through attrition and partly because it made more sense to try getting through the enemy lines in small units. If things got tense and a quick decision was required, we would be quieter and less noticeable while at the same time being faster and more flexible.

      At a forest edge that had given us cover for the past couple of days, we saw a small cottage.

      After a short discussion, the decision was made. A major, who had joined our small band of soldiers only a few days ago, and I were going to go to the farmhouse to check it out. Perhaps we could find

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