My Story: The Red Scarf

By Renata Cheyne

From Reader's Digest Magazine

The guns began rumbling in the distance, making it impossible to concentrate. My classmates and I exchanged fearful glances. Suddenly a woman dashed into the room and whispered something to our teacher who then calmly told us the lesson was over. We must each pack a small bag of belongings. We would leave in an hour. It was March 1945. The Russian army had entered Austria and was advancing quickly across our country.

Rumours had been circulating for some time that Germany was losing the war, but we talked about it only in whispers. Now the little village of Kirchdorf was abuzz. The only question on everyone's lips was: "Are you leaving?"

That decision had already been made for me and my ten-year-old classmates. A bus and two teachers were waiting, but there was no room for parents. My father had already been conscripted into the army, but my mother, Mutti, soon arrived to reassure me. She would follow the bus on her bicycle as best she could, she said. And she would be wearing a red scarf so that I could see her in the distance.

The charcoal-powered bus set off, puffing away as we joined the exodus. As we crawled up a mountain pass packed with cars, horses and carts, buses, bicycles - anything that could carry passengers - I craned my neck to look out of the window, to see if Mutti was following. The columns of refugees seemed endless. We were halfway up the mountain when I finally saw the red scarf following slowly, slowly. I seldom took my eyes off it after that.

In the late afternoon we arrived in a small village and were billeted at a local tavern for the night. Six of us girls shared a room with wooden bunks. We were so tired we would have slept anywhere. But where was Mutti? I had not seen the red scarf for a while and I was beginning to worry.

Then there she was, with her red scarf firmly in place. She sat next to me on the bunk and explained that tomorrow it would be more difficult for her to follow. But I was not to worry, she said. She would catch up with me as soon as she could. Our bus trundled on the next day but there was no red scarf in sight. At some stage the bus gave up the ghost and our teachers herded us into a train; it didn't matter where it went as long as it was away from the advancing Russians. In Salzburg we had to evacuate the carriages when an air raid siren sounded. We huddled in a disused salt mine and waited, with salty water dripping on us, until the all-clear alarm was sounded. We had barely boarded the train again when we heard a low-flying plane and the chattering of a machine gun. "On the floor, on the floor!" our teachers screamed. We obeyed instantly and hid under the benches.

Later that night we arrived in the small Bavarian village of Heldenstein. Again a tavern owner took us in. We occupied a large room upstairs with bunks and straw pallets. The war rumbled on and we watched bombs falling a few kilometres away. Soon after, May 8 arrived and with it the end of the war. A white pillowcase fluttered from the church steeple as a sign of surrender and we anxiously awaited the arrival of the occupying forces. The Americans roared in on a Jeep, but they were interested only in members of the German army. There was none.

As no parents had caught up with us, each girl was sent to a different farm for the day and returned to the tavern at night. I ended up on a small farm that kept cows, pigs, chickens, ducks - even bees. The kindly farmer and his family treated me like one of their own. I was kept busy on the farm during the day, but at night the worrying thoughts about my mother returned. Where was she? Was she alive? Would I ever see her again?

Then one day some parents arrived to pick up their two daughters. They told us the Russians now occupied parts of Austria and that things were improving but food was still scarce. The only communication was through people passing on messages. We all began to hope that our parents, too, would soon find us.

Months went by and life became routine. Each day I would feed the chickens, laughing as they clustered round me while I threw the grain. In a way they replaced the toys I no longer had. Then one day, as I was feeding the chickens, I spotted a figure approaching in the distance.

I couldn't tell whether it was a man or a woman, but something compelled me to keep looking. Did I see something red? I stopped feeding the chickens and looked harder. Could it be? The red became more distinct now. Yes, it was! There was no doubt. I dropped the bowl of chicken feed and the chickens scattered in all directions. "Mutti, Mutti!" I cried. It was then that my mother saw me too and started running up the hill as fast as she could. At long last my mother had come for me. And there, wrapped round her head, was the red scarf - just as she said it would be.

Renata Cheyne, 70, is a retired midwife and lives in Mount Maunganui, New Zealand, witih her husbane Bob. Her mother, Madeleine, is 92.