I was exhausted and had to rely on Herr Schreiner to help me and knew in my soul that God had sent him to my aid. As tired as I was, I couldn’t have handled my luggage alone. Finally another train did pull into the station but in stark contrast to the empty platform we were standing on, the train was completely full of people. Although he wasn’t that big of a man, Herr Schreiner pushed my suitcases up the two steps into the railway car, and I climbed up behind them. As the train left the station, he hung onto the two entrance handles right behind me and I pushed for space, trying to make enough room for him to get into the carriage. With every surge of the train I expected him to lose his grip but with what I am certain was superhuman strength, he hung on as the train picked up speed. Several of the people made snide remarks but I turned a deaf ear to this and pushed as hard as I could, so that he could also get in. With the help of another man pulling on his coat, Herr Schreiner finally managed to squeeze in far enough so that we could close the door behind him. Once safely on the train, someone from his school in Mannheim recognized him. Herr Schreiner had been a very popular, much admired school principal and seeing how tired and bedraggled we now looked, the passenger offered us his window seats and helped to make room so that we could store our suitcases in the luggage rack above our heads. The train didn’t make any more stops and continued east crossing the Rhine River Bridge, which miraculously was still there. I couldn’t believe that everything had come together as well as it had, and that I was on my way back to Überlingen and my children.
Hank Bracker
european-history, germany, perseverance, woman-s-strength, world-warii-history