Against the Wind
AGAINST THE
WIND
Summerside Press™
Minneapolis 55438
Against the Wind
© 2011 by Bodie & Brock Thoene
ISBN 978-1-60936-108-2
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form, except for brief quotations in printed reviews, without written permission of the publisher.
Scripture references marked KJV are taken from The Holy Bible, King James Version.
Scripture quotations marked ESV are from
The Holy Bible
, English Standard Version®, copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the authors’ imaginations or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons living or dead is entirely coincidental and beyond the intent of either the authors or publisher.
Cover designed, concepted, and illustrated © 2011 by Robin Hanley (
http://robinhanley.com
), in cooperation with Koechel Peterson and Associates, Inc. Minneapolis.
Authors’ photo © 2010 by Robin Hanley,
http://robinhanley.com
Interior Design by Müllerhaus Publishing Group |
www.mullerhaus.net
Edited by Ramona Cramer Tucker
Summerside Press™ is an inspirational publisher offering fresh, irresistible books to uplift the heart and engage the mind.
Printed in USA.
DEDICATION
This story is written with love for Robin Hanley, my true sister from the beginning of everything. Your faith gives us courage and light. You are one with those who sail against the wind. Cast upon the sea, you spread your wings and are lifted by the gale to rise above the waves.
Contents
1
LIFEBOAT NUMBER 7
TENTH DAY—NORTH ATLANTIC
NOVEMBER 3, 1940
LAST WILL AND TESTAMENT of Elisa Lindheim Murphy.
Age: 27 yrs.
Born: February 3, 1913, Berlin, Germany.
Father: Theo Lindheim—Hebrew Christian. Patriot and hero of Germany in the Great War of 1918. Jewish refugee escaped Nazi Germany in 1937.
Mother: Anna Ibsen Lindheim—German Christian. Concert pianist.
I am the beloved wife of John Murphy, American journalist in London. I am foster mother of twin adopted sons, Charles and Louis Kronenberger, age 8. I am mother of a baby girl, Katie, 17 months, who is safe in America now with my husband’s parents.
I have few material goods left to me after so many years as a refugee from the Nazis. All that I have I leave to my husband, John Murphy. More than material goods, I leave all my love.
To My Dear Ones:
It is ten days since the German U-boat attacked the SS
Newcastle
as we journeyed toward America. I am in Lifeboat Number 7, in the midst of the North Atlantic, among survivors—brave men, women, and children. As each day passes, we lose more of our company to death upon this cruel sea. Some among us have given up hope we will be found alive and rescued. I pray we will be spotted before it is too late. Our hope grows dim.
Perhaps God will grant us a second chance to live life with our families. But I do not know if I will survive. Others, stronger than I, have already perished. I feel I must write this love letter to my dearest Murphy and to our children. At the urging of my companions, who look at the empty horizon and no longer see hope, I will put down my final thoughts for my loved ones.
First, I think of my baby girl, who will never know me except perhaps from this letter and by what those closest to me will tell her. I pray the promises of Psalm 91 upon her sweet life. Beloved Murphy will tell our daughter who I was and why I sent her from England to America. My every thought and deed was motivated by love for my children.
I am a concert violinist, not a writer. Music is my first language, the language of my heart. Some among us in Number 7 will recount facts and details about our last days on the vast ocean.
“What was it like to be on the SS
Newcastle
when the German U-boat attacked?” some might ask.
If I could but lift my violin and play the music of Kol Nidre, I would feel the blast as the torpedo tears through the hull. I would feel the great ship shudder as the water rises. I could hear again the cries of children cast adrift in the seas….
Voices! Voices! My heart hears them still as the wind lifts their souls from the waves into the arms of angels hovering just above us.
It is strange to think that I will no longer inhabit the earth. I fought bravely and traveled far in the hope that I would live on beyond the war, as others perished. I was distracted by the expectation of what tomorrow would bring. I thought the stars would not shine unless I was beneath them, looking up. As a music student, I played my violin beside the open window of our house on Wilhelmstrasse, believing my music would bring heaven down to those who passed by.
The stars will shine without me. Some other musician will inherit the music of Bach and Mozart. My violin will sing for new generations long after I am gone.
The breeze is in my face. My soul is like a seabird rising against the wind. Soon I will hover with joy above the earth. I am finished wishing wishes, and I leave only one great regret behind.
With plain words, how can I portray a tale of life and death—my struggle and my failure to save all the little ones entrusted to my care? I string together the letters of the alphabet as if they are musical notes on a treble clef. I long for ink to become black fire upon white fire, tympany and trumpet, kindling a
requiem of courage and hope and self-sacrifice for those who survived and for those who did not.
As a child of mixed Jewish and Gentile parentage, I have spent all my youth, it seems, trying to escape the Nazis. I have left behind with Mama my personal diary, beginning the Christmas of 1936 when our family first fled Nazi Germany. I leave the diary to my husband now to translate into English for our children one day. Those terrible days, as our nation was lost to tyranny because good men failed to stand firm against evil, must never be forgotten.
Perhaps my diary is enough for my little ones to remember who their mother was and why I perished in the North Atlantic.
But there are those who cannot write down their thoughts. What can I say about those on the
Newcastle
who died so very young? Their parents, waiting for word in England, will want to know.
I see their faces, those beautiful children, so many lost in one night. They smile at me in my restless dreams upon the sea.
Who will write about them? If we do not survive, who will remember?
I raise my eyes now and squint against the sun. I see one child who is a hero in this story. He lies beside me in the bow of the lifeboat as our little vessel bobs in the waves. He is too weak now to write and, through parched lips, has asked me to recount what I could about his life. When I first met him, he was a choirboy at Westminster Abbey, a child from Primrose Hill Village. Sandy hair, fair, sun-freckled skin, wide, green-blue eyes that narrow when he laughs or thrusts his chin upward to consider a clever reply.
The name of this small hero is Connor Turner. If he does not survive, he will be remembered as one woman’s darling son. He played the penny whistle, and everyone remarked that he sang like an angel. She was proud her son was selected to sing with the Abbey choir. She showed his school photograph to the girls round the telephone exchange where she worked. The language of a mother’s love is the same everywhere. Her heartbreak is a melody everyone recognizes.
After the Westminster Boys’ School closed because of the Blitz, Connor was sent home.
Brave and terrified at the same time, Connor’s mother stood over his bed and wondered if he would survive the rain of bombs falling each night on London.
In a queue outside the bakery, she studied casualty lists and noted the tender ages of the English dead.
While she uprooted roses and planted cabbages in her Victory Garden, her neighbor leaned across the fence and told her about the children’s ships.
Ironing Connor’s shirts, she dreamed that America might be the haven where her son could live safely until the war was over.
As the BBC announced grim news about the conflict, she listened at the kitchen table and filled out endless applications and forms.
She remembered that miracles are possible. Kneeling by the radio, she prayed her boy would be given a place on one of the evacuee ships sailing to America.
Celebration and sorrow arrived in the post with the letter accepting him and a handful of choirboys into the evacuee program. They would sing and bear witness to the Americans that England stood alone against the Nazis.
Connor would sail a few days before his eighth birthday.
Was she doing the right thing to let him go?
Connor assured his mother that a sea voyage to America would be a great adventure. He would celebrate his birthday somewhere on the sea.
On the day of parting, he raised his chin and kissed her good-bye. She wiped her tears with a white kerchief and tucked it into his pocket. “Don’t cry, Mum. I’ll see you soon. Mum, I’ll be back! You’ll see. Don’t cry!” As the ship slipped from the dock, courageous Connor plucked out the hankie, and with fierce and desperate cheerfulness, waved it like a banner.
Listen and walk beside me through those terrible hours.
The dissonant music of parting plays for all those who sent their children away from England during the Blitz. It was the same for us as we tried to escape from Nazi Germany in 1936.
How many will turn their backs on all they hold dear and set out, never to return?
Connor’s face is the one I see when the wind whistles across the canvas shelter in the bow, and I dream again the desperate voices of children crying from the water.
We were three days out to sea, Connor’s eighth birthday, when the torpedo struck our ship. But I began my journey toward this moment of life and death long before I ever boarded the SS
Newcastle
.
He shall give His angels charge over thee, to keep thee in all thy ways.
P
SALM
91:11
KJV
BERLIN, NAZI GERMANY
DECEMBER 10, 1936
Angels have charge over all my ways? As all I have known and loved changes before my eyes, I hope this is true.
Opened gifts early with family tonight. Uncles, aunts, and cousins gather here at the Wilhelmstrasse house for our annual family holiday party. Our gathering is always early, since both my uncles are pastors, and their calendars fill up. And I have holiday concerts to play back in Vienna.
Mama’s present—this leather-bound diary—and one each of different colors to me and cousins Lori Ibsen and Loralei Bittick. Mine is red and stamped with roses. I thumb through blank pages. Scripture verses inscribed on each page.
I wonder what earth-changing events will fill the blank lines of our lives this year.
I pray there is an angel watching over every member of our family. I fear this will be our last family gathering in Berlin.
Cousins Lori and Loralei spend the night. They are like little sisters to me. We look like sisters, though each of us has different parents. Both girls named for great-grandmother Koenig. They both look so much like Grandmother’s old photos. Lori and Loralei are slender, pretty girls. Hair the color of ripe wheat. Bright blue eyes. Straight teeth. We laugh a lot and talk about the king of England giving up his throne today so he can marry the woman he loves. King Edward and the American Wallis Simpson will ride off into the sunset. So romantic. We prefer to think about falling in love in Buckingham Palace even though Berlin is cloaked with gloom and the whole world is crumbling around us. Do we still imagine everything will return to normal somehow?