As they walked Else filled Alex in on her husband’s details in case he should be asked: where he had been born, how old he was, where he had been educated, what job he had done in civilian life – he had been a bricklayer for the city corporation in Potsdam. Because Alex still limped from the effects of his broken leg which had not been properly set, the others on the road accepted that he had been invalided out of the army and he became used to being addressed as Erich.

Else herself was the daughter of a grocer. Her father had become more and more depressed by the rationing and the shortages and, having nothing to sell, had taken his own life. ‘Hanged himself in the cellar,’ she told him. ‘When Mutti saw him hanging there with his mouth and eyes wide open, she had a heart attack and died in hospital a week later. I shut the shop up and took a job in the garment factory, making Wehrmacht uniforms. It was while working there I met Erich. He drove the lorry that came to collect the finished goods. We were married just before he was sent to the Eastern Front. We had no married life to speak of.’ She spoke without inflexion, giving no indication of how these tragedies, coming one after the other, had hit her.

‘I’m sorry,’ he murmured. ‘War is bestial, no matter whose side you are on.’

‘What did you do before the war?’

‘I was a diplomat.’

‘Not a soldier?’

‘No. I left England before the war started, or I might have been.’ He paused. ‘Do you know where the Allies are?’

‘Not exactly.’

‘But France has been liberated?’

‘Yes, and the Netherlands. But we are not done yet. There is a secret weapon the Führer says will change the whole course of the war and give us victory.’

‘And what is that?’

‘A flying bomb. It is already devastating London. The population is in panic and the government gone into hiding.’

He smiled at her simple confidence in what she had been told but he did not believe Londoners were panicking. While in Russia at the beginning of the war, he had heard reports of the London Blitz and how everyone had coped, and he imagined Edward in his business suit, bowler hat and rolled umbrella going to work at the Foreign Office, just as if nothing had happened. Oh, how he hoped that was an accurate picture. Hitler’s invasion of Russia had brought the nightly attacks on London to an end as the Soviets had never ceased to remind everyone when lobbying for a second front to relieve the pressure on them. Now they had it and Germany was being attacked on both sides. ‘Then perhaps I am fortunate to be here,’ he said mildly.

‘How are you going to find the Allies?’ she asked.

‘I don’t know. Catch a train, I suppose.’

She laughed, assuming he was joking.

‘What about you?’

‘I have an aunt and a cousin in Potsdam. I shall go there.’

‘You are not going to come with me and surrender to the Allies, then?’

‘No. I have no wish to be a prisoner.’

They stopped at night to try and find lodgings, but every hotel, house and barn was already crowded with refugees and the unlucky ones built fires beside the road to cook what they could and slept where they were. The trek continued. The weakest fell by the wayside and were abandoned. When baggage became too heavy that was also abandoned to lie beside rifles, anti-tank guns and ammunition boxes – all the detritus of war. There was no food and they resorted to begging at farmhouse doors. Sometimes they were welcomed, sometimes turned away, and Else’s money was soon gone.

He had been half starved and was painfully thin, but forced labour had made him stronger than he looked. It was Else who faltered first. She had seemed so strong and determined, but all the walking took its toll. Her feet became covered in blisters which suppurated and became infectious, and as day followed day, their progress became slower and slower. He could not in conscience abandon her and helped her along as best he could, and thus they arrived at Neustrelitz, still too far east for Alex’s peace of mind. He half dragged, half carried her to the railway station.

‘Come to Potsdam with me; my relatives will give you food and clothes,’ she said that night as they waited on the platform, hoping, along with hundreds of others, that a train would come. When it did, it was packed to suffocation and steamed straight through without stopping. Alex cursed, but cursing did no good, and Else had a fever which worried him. He left her to go in search of a doctor and found one at last, trying to tend the sickness and wounds of the thousands of refugees who had descended on the town. They were queueing two- and three-deep for hundreds of yards. Alex realised he would have to bring Else to the queue. He went back for her but she could not move. He left her again and found a pharmacy, where he was given salve for the blisters.

The salve helped a little but she still could not walk. She gave him her wedding ring and, with the money it fetched, he bought bread, a small lump of cheese and a tin of soup, which he took back to her. ‘Don’t leave me,’ she begged, wolfing down the food. He watched, hungry himself but reluctant to take anything from her. Nor could he leave her.

Two days they rested there, while all the while the Red Army was coming closer. Something had to be done. He went into the countryside and found a farmer who had a horse and cart which he was loading, ready to flee himself. Alex, telling the story about being captured by the Red Army and then the Germans, which ensured him a sympathetic hearing, begged a lift for Else. Reluctantly the man agreed. Else was fetched and lifted onto the back of the cart behind a table, chairs, a bedstead and mattress, several bundles of clothes, a sack of potatoes and a cloth-wrapped loaf of bread. The farmer and his wife sat at the front and Alex walked alongside.

Progress was even slower than walking because of the number of refugees and the abandoned debris of war on the road, but at least Else was resting. They arrived in Fürstenberg late at night to discover the town was being evacuated en masse. The Russians, so they were told, were only a few kilometres away and the Americans were at Bad Kleinen. Alex would have liked to strike off in that direction, but Else was determined to go to Potsdam, convinced the Allies would be halted long before they reached there; leaving her would be a cowardly and ungrateful thing to do. There was a train going south the next morning and they managed to squeeze onto it.

They arrived in Berlin the next day after a night in a siding during an air raid. Alex had stayed in the city during his time as a diplomat and thought he knew his way about, but very little was recognisable among the ruins. They were confronted by whole streets which were nothing but rubble. Else, only able to hobble, was horrified and insisted they go to Potsdam at once. They caught a local train but that stopped short of Potsdam and everyone was told to leave it. ‘The station has been blown up,’ they were told. ‘You’ll have to walk the rest of the way.’

The lovely city of Potsdam, once the state capital, full of ancient palaces and churches, was also in ruins. Else, leaning heavily on his arm, guided him to the street where her relations lived, but it had been totally destroyed. She stood looking at the heap of bricks, stone, broken windows and smashed furniture with tears raining down her face. ‘Now I have no one,’ she wept. ‘I am alone.’ She turned and flung herself into his arms. ‘You will stay with me, won’t you? If the Americans come, you will stand up for me? Tell them I helped you.’

What could he do but agree? Without her and the clothes and money she had provided he would have died on the march, because the straggling line of prisoners would almost certainly have been taken by the advancing Russians. Someone had told him they had been destined to be put on board a ship which would have put to sea and been deliberately sunk. Either way, he would not have survived. He was not as sure as Else was that it would be the Americans who reached them first and his only hope of staying out of a Russian prison was to remain Erich Weissmann.

They lived like rats in the cellars of bombed houses, coming out now and again to try and find food, begging and scavenging. Money had no value, so they traded whatever they could find in the bombed buildings for food. By the time the Russians overran the city, they were living skeletons dressed in rags. But the anonymity was a blessing.

The conquerors were in jubilant mood, drunk much of the time, raping the women, which they said was no more than the Germans did to the Russian women. Else was afraid all the time and clung to Alex, who managed to keep the soldiers at bay with his ready command of Russian. They heard daily reports of the Battle for Berlin which was raging street by street and getting closer and closer to Hitler’s headquarters in the Reichstadt. The day it was overrun was a black day for the inhabitants but one of jubilation for the Russians, who celebrated with noisy parties and drunken orgies. No one believed Germany could win the war and none was surprised when it ended with the news of the Führer’s suicide, and very shortly afterwards, Germany’s unconditional surrender.

‘Now we can live in peace,’ Else said, as she emerged from the cellar in which they had been living to see their conquerors celebrating. ‘Now, perhaps they will go home and we can get on with our lives.’

Alex did not believe for a minute the Russians would go; it was their avowed intention to spread communism throughout the world and they set out to sovietise all the land they had overrun. Germany became a country divided between the Allies; Potsdam was in the Russian zone.