Fire and Flame
By: Lothar Metzger
Introduction
By:Gen1900
This piece of tear-jerking work was written by a nine year old boy, who lived in Dresden. I found this in a book about World War 2, and when I read it . . . I almost cried. It will surely show you the horrors of war. . .
“About 9:30 p.m. the alarm was given. We children knew that sound and got up and dressed quickly, to hurry downstairs into our cellar which we used as an air raid shelter. My older sister and I carried my baby twin sisters, my mother carried a little suitcase and the bottles with milk for our babies . . .
“Some minutes later we heard a horrible noise-the bombers. There were non-stop explosions. Our cellar was filled with fire and smoke . . . In great fear we struggled to leave this cellar. My mother and my older sister carried the big basket in which the twins were laid. With one hand I grasped my younger sister and with the other, I grasped the coat of my mother . . .
“We didn’t recognize our street anymore. Fire, only fire wherever we looked . . . On the streets there were burning vehicles and carts with refugees, people, horses, all of them screaming and shouting in fear of death. I saw hurt women, children, and old people searching a way through ruins and flames.”
“We fled into another cellar overcrowded with injured and distraught men, women, and children shouting, crying, and praying . . . then suddenly the second raid began. This shelter was hit too, and so we fled through cellar after cellar . . .”
“Explosion after explosion. It was beyond belief, worse than the blackest nightmare. So many people were horribly burnt and injured. It became more and more difficult to breathe . . . all of us tried to leave this cellar with inconceivable panic. Dead and dying people were trampled upon. The basket with our twins covered with wet cloths was snatched up out of my mother’s hands and we were pushed upstairs by the people behind us. We saw the burning street, the falling ruins and the terrible firestorm . . .
“We saw terrible things: cremated adults shrunk to the size of small children, pieces of arms and legs . . . whole families burn to death, burning people ran to and fro . . . many were calling and looking for their children and families, and fire everywhere . . . and all the time hot wind of the firestorm threw people back into the burning houses they were trying to escape from.”
Gen1900: Further Research and Comments
772 heavy bombers of British Air Force and 527 of the United States Air Force dropped more than 3,900 tons of high-explosive bombs and incendiary devices on the city of innocents. How could we stoop so slow to such a barbaric operation? In all . . . 135,000 men, women, and children perished. Including in one hospital, 45 expectant mothers, who didn’t even have the chance to hold their babies in their own arms . . . died, along with 200 others. And the city had NO military significance whatsoever. Britain and United States did it just to prove that they were capable of fire . . . and flame. They believed it was a necessary push to achieve Germany’s surrender. Germany, wanted peace negotiations, we wanted complete surrender and only that. I have two question: Doesn’t it make you think? Don’t you now believe war is just a mass murder of men, women, and children?
Picture on the cover is Lothar Metzger and his older sister. He survived the bombing.
Autobiography
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