The Valour and the Horror

Kate Hoffmeister

Aunt Emma and I stood by a row of four big trees that were on fire and again we discussed what we were going to do. I suggested that we roll down this bank; it was too steep to get down any other way. I took my hand out of my aunt's and went. I think I rolled over some people who were still alive. I lost my aunt at that point. By then, my face and arms and legs had been burnt so that I could only act by touch but my burns had not yet started to hurt. I felt a thick woollen blanket; I knew, by instinct, that it would be safer under that blanket. We had always been told, over and over again, that a woollen blanket would protect us against fire because wool does not burn but only smoulders. I got under it and stayed there.

Next morning, Kate Hoffmeister, although badly burnt, went to look for her relatives. She found the body of Aunt Emma, identifying it by a blue&endash;and&endash;white sapphire ring that she always wore. Her father and two uncles died but she later met her mother, by coincidence, in the same hospital near Kassel, 160 miles from Hamburg.