European Resistance Archive/European Resistance Archive (ERA)

We then met female comrades who were in Norway or Copenhagen.

It was very hard to co-ordinate such a holiday,

but it was obviously an exchange of experience that was thorough,

because you had to confine yourself to communicating in telegram styles during radio or coded correspondence.

And now you were able to analyse together: What has happened and what needs to be done?

These meetings took place, but it was really a thing that was quite free of emotions.

Injuries and being a radio operator

It was a bagatelle that brought me in front of the court martial in Africa.

If they had known what I really did, I would have been summarily executed.

As it was, I was taken to the court martial and condemned to the punishment battalion in Africa.

That was horrible because you were totally isolated

and because you were often sent out in front of the tanks – as cannon catch.

Near the Highfalla Pass, near Tobruk.

I was seriously wounded after six weeks in the punishment battalion.

I was unconscious for two days and then came to Athens and there my eye had to be removed.

The one side of my face is paralysed because of this injury.

I was not fit for war any more and was retrained as a radio operator.

In spite of all my bad luck, this was the best that could happen.

Radio operators were not only privileged.

Due to their occupation they were able to listen to what BBC or the station ‘Freies Deutschland’ were broadcasting.