Life Promised to Be Good Again - Eva Priestly

Eva R. Priestley
Airlift child
Born 1932, Berlin, Germany

How I Met Eva

Todd DePastino of the Veterans Breakfast Club introduced me to Bob Von Bargen, a veteran, memoir writer, and passionate storyteller involved with the Armed Forces Heritage Museum in New Jersey. Bob heard about my work preserving personal memories of the Berlin Airlift, and he immediately thought of someone he felt I needed to meet.

Her name was Eva Priestley.

Bob described her as a native Berliner, a gifted writer, a beloved teacher of creative writing, and, at ninety-three years, still sharp, lively, and full of stories. He told me she had lived through the bombing of Berlin, evacuation, loss, the return to a destroyed city, and the blockade that followed. She had written about those years in her memoir, A Girl Named Eva, and she was willing to speak with me.

When Eva and I first connected, we began in German, then moved easily between German and English. We talked about Berlin neighborhoods, books, music, teaching, grandchildren, and the strange way life carries people across oceans and still leaves them connected to the places where they began.

Eva was funny, direct, curious, and full of warmth. In the middle of hard memories, she would make a small observation that made me smile. She did not tell her story with bitterness. She told it with clarity, and often with wonder.

And as I listened, I realized that Eva’s Airlift story¹ is not only a story about hunger.

It is a story about hope.

Life Promised to Be Good Again

I was born in Berlin in 1932.

By the time the Berlin Airlift began, I had already lived through more than a child should ever experience. I had heard the air raid sirens. I had run to the basement for shelter from falling bombs in the middle of the night. I had learned that when the alarm sounded, you did not ask questions. You got up. You followed your mother. You went where you were told to go, and you waited.

In the beginning, the British planes came. Later the American’s came, too. I learned about the sirens. The bombing became worse and worse. A child learns about those sounds before it understands the politics.

Night after night, we were pulled out of our beds and hurried into shelter. I learned to know the rush of footsteps. And I learned the difference between ordinary darkness and the kind of darkness that comes from danger.

My father had been drafted. He did not want to go, of course. Who would want to leave his family in the middle of such a time? But when he was called, he had to go.

My mother, my sister Gisela, and I were evacuated from Berlin to the island of Wollin, in the Baltic Sea. We used to come here for summer vacations. Now, it become a place of waiting, uncertainty, and war. We were away from home, because home was not safe anymore.

When we returned to Berlin after the war, we learned that our house in Berlin-Rudow had been bombed. It was still standing, but not inhabitable. The walls might collapse at any time. So, we could not go back home and moved in with my grandparents in Berlin-Britz. That was where we were during the Airlift.

By then, Berlin was like an island. That is how I remember it. All around us was the Soviet zone, and inside the city we had the American, British, French, and Soviet sectors. But the Russians wanted the whole city. So, one day in June 1948, they closed everything. The roads, the railways, the waterways. Nothing could come in anymore. No food, no coal, no clothing, nothing.

We understood what they wanted. They wanted us to give up. They wanted us to say, “Dear Russians, please take us. We want to belong to you.” But we did not.

The Western Allies did not give us up, though. Instead, they sent airplanes. We called them Rosinenbomber. Raisin Bombers.

That is such a Berlin word, isn’t it? Even in misery, Berliners have a way of naming things. A big airplane becomes a Raisin Bomber. The name sounds almost cheerful. But to us, those airplanes meant life!

The planes brought flour, potatoes, coal, milk, medicine, clothing, and everything else we needed to stay alive. They landed at Tempelhof, not far from where we lived. The flight path did not pass directly over our house, so I cannot say that the airplanes roared over our roof every few minutes the way some people experienced them. But we knew they were there. We heard them. We talked about them. Their sound became part of our lives.

To me, that sound meant: someone is still coming, someone cares and has not forgotten us. That matters when you are hungry. And we were very hungry!

The shelves in the stores were almost always empty. If people heard that a delivery had arrived, or even that one was expected, word spread quickly. Everyone rushed to get in line. Old people, mothers, children, everyone waited, hoping to receive something. Often, by the time the last people came close, there was nothing left.

People sometimes talk about the Airlift in numbers. So many flights. So many tons. So many days. Those numbers are important, of course. But when I stood in the food line, numbers were not what I thought about. I wondered: Will there still be something left when I get to the counter?

My mother worked long hours, and after work she would stand in yet another line for our small ration of food. She was tired. Everyone was tired. But tired or not, the hunger was worse, and we still had to find something to eat.

My grandmother, my sister Gisela, and I went out almost every day to parks and open places to pick weeds for cooking. That sounds simple enough now, maybe even a little romantic if one imagines baskets and green leaves. It was not romantic! It was desperate hunger. We had to learn which plants could be eaten and which could not.

Once we picked a small low-growing plant we thought we recognized. We had eaten something similar before and found it quite tasty. So, we cooked it and ate it. ... and learned a lesson, when later, that night, our stomachs hurt terribly, and we were sick.

We found out that the plant was buttercup. It was only edible, if at all, in tiny amounts early in the spring. We did not know. How would we have known? We were not botanists. We were hungry Berliners. After that, we were more careful.

We became little scavengers. On our walks home from Rudow, we sometimes pulled carrots from a farmer’s field. Once we even found corn and were so delighted. Corn! Imagine! We carried it home, and my mother removed the husks and cooked it. She boiled it and boiled it. And boiled it again. And still, it would not get tender. Finally, we ate it anyway, because we were so hungry. Only later did we learn that it was horse corn. Not corn meant for people at all.

I smile about it now, but at the time there was nothing funny about being hungry enough to eat whatever we could find. Still, those small lessons stayed with me. Buttercup can make you sick. Horse corn does not soften no matter how long you boil it.

The war had interrupted school for many of us. Buildings had been destroyed. Schools had closed or moved. Teachers had disappeared into war, occupation, or loss. Everything had been interrupted, including childhood itself.

And yet, even then, life was not only suffering. Even in the hardest days, we were still girls. We went back to school. We still whispered, laughed, worried about lessons, admired a kind teacher, disliked an unkind one, and wondered about the future.

In 1948, I became a tenth grader. Our classroom that winter was bitterly cold. We sat with our coats buttoned tight, trying to keep warm while we studied. I remember my teacher, Herr Bierbaum. I liked him very much. He was a good and caring teacher.

One winter day, he took us on a wood-scavenging hike. We went out together to collect anything we could burn, and he even let us cut down small trees. Thanks to him, we could heat our classroom.

Imagine that: a teacher, not only teaching poetry or grammar or lessons from a book but taking his students into the cold to find wood so they can sit in a classroom warm enough to learn.

Christmas in 1948 could have been very sad. We had so little. The days were short and icy. We walked through the streets in our shabby coats, shivering as the wind came around corners and through the ruins.

At home, chores had to be done quickly before the electricity would go out again. When the lights turned off, we settled by the glow of a carbide lamp. It smelled terrible and sometimes made sudden little explosive noises that startled us.

One evening, my sister Gisela announced, “We have to bake cookies. Christmas will be here soon.” My mother answered gently, “I’m sorry, but we can’t. If we use our ration coupons for flour, we won’t have enough bread.” That was the end of it, or so we thought.

Gisela was fourteen. While I considered myself practical, hardened by all we had lived through, Gisela had a quiet sweetness. And she had determination!

A few days later, she came home from school carrying a bundle in her schoolbag. She opened it with the triumph of someone who had brought home treasure. Inside were several slices of stale bread. My mother was alarmed. That bread was supposed to be Gisela’s school lunch. Was she sick? Why had she not eaten?

Gisela explained that she had saved the bread so that we could eat it at home instead. If we did that for a few days, my mother would not have to buy another loaf, and the ration coupons could be used for flour. For Christmas cookies.

That was Gisela. She did not make speeches about sacrifice. She simply did it.

Thanks to her, my mother was able to mix cookie dough. Soon the smell of baking filled the apartment. In those days, a fragrance like that could feel like a miracle. Flour, sugar, warmth, sweetness. It was more than food because it carried the promise of Christmas.

I wanted to make something special for Gisela, too, so I took a little piece of dough and shaped it into eyeglasses. When the cookies were baked and I gave them to her, she looked at them and asked what they were.

“Don’t you see?” I told her. “It’s a pair of eyeglasses. So you can see better.” She needed them, I explained, because she always said her portions were bigger than ours. With glasses, maybe she would see that they were not.

Then, there was still the matter of the Christmas tree.

A real tree was too expensive. We could not afford even the smallest one. My mother did not seem troubled by this. “Ingenuity is what you need,” she said. That was my mother! If there was no tree, she would make one.

We went out and collected loose branches from a place where Christmas trees were being sold. Even those little branches cost a few pennies, but we gathered what we could. At home, my mother found an old broomstick. She drilled holes into it and inserted the spruce branches one by one. Then she jammed the broomstick into a heavy shoe so it could stand upright. She added old metal candleholders with candle stubs left from other years. We hung a few ornaments and some tinsel.

Then we stood back and looked. And yes, we had the most beautiful Christmas tree! It was not beautiful because it was grand. It was beautiful because it existed at all.

A broomstick had become a tree.

Branches had become abundance.

A few cookies had become a feast.

On Christmas Eve, we went to church at the Britzer Dorfkirche. During the service, Gisela began to cry. She missed Papa. I missed him, too.

After the service, snow was falling softly. It floated down and danced through the air. We forgot our tears for a little while. We held out our tongues to catch snowflakes. We scooped up handfuls of snow and tossed them at one another. For a few moments, we were not children of war or the blockade. We were simply children in the snow.

Then we went home to our broomstick tree. My grandparents came. We lit the candles. We sang carols. We drank coffee made from roasted barley because real coffee was not available. We ate our Christmas cookies, made possible by my sister’s sacrifice.

What more did we need? We had each other. We had our little tree. We had cookies. We had songs. And we had God, who watched over us and would not allow anyone to take Christmas away from us. Not even the Russians!

That is the thing I remember most about that Christmas. It was not about what we lacked. It was about what remained. Love remained. Music remained. Faith remained. A mother’s creativity remained. A sister’s kindness remained.

And hope remained.

To me, that is also part of the Airlift story.

The pilots flew. The ground crews unloaded. The commanders planned. The world watched. But in Berlin, ordinary people did ordinary things with extraordinary determination. A mother stretched ration coupons. A girl saved bread. A teacher gathered wood. Everyone did what they could.

Maybe that’s why I never think of the Airlift as only airplanes. Yes, the airplanes saved us. Without them, we could not have survived.

But the Airlift also lived in kitchens, classrooms, churches, and cold little apartments where people refused to give up.

The blockade continued into 1949. Winter turned slowly toward spring. We were still hungry. We still had ration cards. We still had shortages.

But the planes kept coming.

That is a sentence one can say quickly, but to us it meant everything!

The planes kept coming. In bad weather, they came. In danger, they came. Again and again and again.

Somewhere beyond our ruined streets and cold classrooms, there were people loading airplanes, flying airplanes, repairing airplanes, guiding airplanes, unloading airplanes. We did not know their names. We did not see their faces. But their efforts reached our table. It reached our stove. It reached our school. It reached our future.

Every landing was a promise: We will not abandon you.

Every delivery sent the message: Hold on.

When people speak of the Airlift, they often speak of freedom, democracy, and courage. They are right to do so. But to me as a young person, freedom looked like a slice of bread. Democracy looked like a few pieces of coal. Courage sounded like engines in the sky.

And hope smelled like Christmas cookies in a cold Berlin apartment.

Then, on May 12, 1949, the blockade ended. The roads opened again. The railways and waterways opened. Goods began to pour into the western sectors. Shelves that had stood empty for so long filled again. Electricity stayed on. Heating material became available. Stores had clothing for sale. People could buy things again, if they had money.

It did not mean that everything was suddenly easy. Berlin was still wounded. Families still carried losses. My father would not come home. The past did not disappear because the roads reopened.

But something had changed. After so much fear and hunger and uncertainty, we could breathe more freely. It was as if the city itself had been holding its breath and now, at last, could exhale.

Life promised to be good again.

Many years later, I came to America. I married Tom, a kind man who played French horn in the Army Band. I became an American, but I never stopped being a Berliner.

I taught. I wrote books. I sang in choirs. I still sing.

And I still teach creative writing. I tell my students, “Write your memories down, because later, when you are old, and your children want to know what life was like when you were young, you may not remember the details.”

I think of that often now.

Because in the end, it is the little things that stayed with me.

The wood we gathered with our teacher so we would have a warm classroom.

The weeds we picked, and the corn that would not get soft, no matter how long my mother cooked it.

The smell of Christmas cookies when we thought we could not have any.

The little tree my mother made from a broomstick.

Those are the things I remember.

And then, always, there were the airplanes.

We did not always see them from where we lived, but we knew they were there. They came again and again, bringing food, coal, and supplies into a city that had been cut off from the world.

But they brought more than could be unloaded from the planes. They brought the feeling that we had not been forgotten. It was the sound of engines in the sky and the knowledge that someone cared about us.

That was the Berlin Airlift to me!

After everything we had lived through, there was hope. And for the first time in a long while, the future did not feel quite so heavy. And that was like a miracle.

Yes, life promised to be good again.

¹ Parts of Eva R. Priestley’s story are based on her personal Zoom interview with Bibi LeBlanc and on Eva’s published memoir, A Girl Named Eva, in which she recalls her childhood in wartime and postwar Berlin, including the Berlin Blockade and Airlift period. A Girl Named Eva.