#6MEMOSTORY

Zvonko Springer (zzspri@COSY.SBG.AC.AT)
Sat, 22 Nov 1997 17:07:16 +0100 

        Hello Chatback's readers,

        This Memostory is about a radio having quite a historical record. I have
written about the "VOLKSEMPFAENGER" in my MEMORIES.E17 on 17 Nov 1995
already. However I've told the story from a different point of interest
using part of it here in connection with a dramatic incident. Here's this
story titled

                VEMP & BBC NEWS OF 20th JULY 1997

    VOLKSEMPFAENGER (= Folks' receiver) - let call it VEMP - was a radio
brown colored shell of Bakelite. It was a kind of a hard plastic produced
by German IG Farbenindustrie during WWII. Years later, most of electric
appliances' had their shells made of this dark brown material which you get
in many different colors nowadays. Allied Forces landed on Normandy's
Beaches on the "DD" 6th June 1944. We were due for our only home leave
waiting at Neusiedler See barracks on that day. Several days later I
arrived at my hometown Osijek just before my 19th birthday.
    The town was hit hard by one of the worse bombardment by USAF two
days before my arrival. This wasn't a too happy leave after at all. My
father, a well-known lawyer there, somehow has managed to purchase a radio
which I would carry back to the Military training camp in
Stockerau near Vienna. Any radio and so VEMP too must have had a seal on
its rear removal cover (hard cartoon) attesting that the Short Wave Length
(SWL) had been incapacitated. One could bridge over this gap with short
wire using a small splice carefully bringing in a piece of wire through
vent-holes of rear cover. I've used a longer pair of nail scissors instead
placing a prepared wire overcoming VEMP's incapacitation. During WWII one
wasn't allowed listening SWL at all. Anybody caught in doing it had put his
existence in great jeopardy.
        About a fortnight later in our leave we had returned to our barracks in
Stockerau near Vienna. I had carried a large sack, a suitcase and a
knapsack returning from leave. The sack was full of various food provisions
some of were for relatives in Vienna. Mother placed VEMP somewhere at
sack's middle well protected by softer provisions. At sack's top was melted
butter packaged in few parcels. [Melted butter could be preserved for a
longer period.] On our travel back we had passed through Slavonski Brod
railway station and onwards to Zagreb and Vienna. The train had stopped
short of Brod's station building because it was hit by an air-raid previous
night. Air smelt heavy, few fires were still on, soil blackened by fire,
debris and lot of ashes everywhere. Have passed several burned out rail
cars and tangled rails near bomb craters in between. It was a rather bad
sight and experience walking over to the other station's side where another
train waited for onward travelling passengers. We were twelve in our group
from Osijek and have had many parcels to carry along about a mile long
track. One carried 1 or 2 parcels at once stopping along that length
returning for those left behind. One had managed that track in 3-4 stops on
a very hot noon of June 1944. Oh, it was so very hot, air smelling of
burned flesh which choked breathing, everyone perspired profusely mouths
went bone dry. Get me just a sip of water for a Kingdom (which one?) - I
murmured to myself. Each time I lifted my sack it felt more and more soft.
Did butter at top started melting? Would it leak to VEMP and flood it? No,
it didn't happen due to my mother's precautions and wrapping skills making
parcels tight enough.
        Some weeks later in Stockerau we were attending a lecture on military
strategies. A German senior officer held it in a large room with few maps
on a wall. His face was badly crippled but eyes looked at us sternly and
with some sorrow. He had been explaining Allies' strategies on Normandy's
peninsula regarding options they had cutting it from rest of France.
Suddenly, one comrade said aloud: "It had happened already!" Dead silence
followed for few seconds when the officer asked: "HOW DO YOU KNOW THIS? -
OKW DID NOT MENTIONED THIS!" [OKW: Oberkommando dear Wehrmacht = Supreme
Army Command]. (Details see at foot note!) Nobody dared explaining which
wasn't necessary at all - we sat there like dogs getting wetted. Later,
back in our rooms VEMP's wire-bridge has been carefully removed instantly
and stowed away. Fortunately there wasn't any inspection afterwards. OKW
had admitted German Army's defeat in Normady the same day. Soon after
followed dramatic events by the unsuccessful attempt of killing Hitler and
our stupidity was forgotten (or not - who could know it then?).
                                        ***
Epilogue: The end of VEMP came several years later. I left VEMP with our
relatives in Zagreb on return from Stockerau October 1944. Two weeks before
Christmas I became a lieutenant-junior of Croatian Army and had to join a
howitzers' Battery in Osijek soon after. On early morning May 15 1945,
after a withdrawal some 500 km westwards, I've lead Battery's soldiers into
capitulation to Tito's Yugoslav Army. As this Army's Prisoner of War I've
had to walk barefoot the same long way back but survived this Death Marche
of May 45' at last. It has ended for me in a POW's camp in Kovin
(Vojvodina). Most of us left in that camp left after the General Amnesty of
3 Aug 1945. I did return home on 15 Aug 1945.
        What happened to VEMP in the meantime? It served me well after for many
years during my study at University of Zagreb. VEMP's speaker played me
mostly classics like Bach, Beethoven et Al. I could concentrate better on
my work as noise or rackets from outside were blanketed in my small room.
The story of VEMP ended when it broke down sometime after we were married
in 1951. Dear VEMP, as you served me so well I've written this story
thanking for your long services. Who knows where your indestructible
Bakelite casing decays?
                                        ***

Many regards from your
        now old CROATIAN SOLDIER alias Zvonko of the Oak Hill

End of #6MEMOSTORY
* For those interested here some important dates in summer 1944:

D-Day - Invasion of France               6 June
Cherbourg fortress capitulated  29 June
Attempt to kill Hitler                  20 July
Avranches taken by Allies               30 July
Contentin Peninsula cut off &
Pontaubault taken by Gen. Patton         1 August
Angers seized by Allies                 11 August
New invasion at South France            15 August
Bretagne Peninsula cut off              15 August
Saint Malo fortress taken               17 August
Paris liberated                         25 August.