14
PARTISAN REVIEW
statue of St. George against the sky among the high boughs of
chestnut trees. But there was nothing except charred emptiness behind
this outer wall. Between the centre of the town and the Rhine every–
thing had been smashed by shell fire in the last stages of the fighting.
Occasionally I saw written on a wall some surviving Nazi slogan–
'VICTORY OR SIBERIA,'-'BETTER DEATH THAN SIBE–
RIA,' 'WE SHALL WIN-THAT IS CERTAIN,' or 'THE DAY
OF REVENGE WILL COME.' There was something strangely evan–
gelical about these slogans, and one would not have been surprised
to see 'GOD IS LOVE' or ABANDON HOPE ALL YE WHO
ENTER HERE' among them. Frequently there appeared on the
wall a black looming figure with a question mark over his shoulder.
At first I thought this might be one of the Nazi leaders, but it turned
out to be a warning against spies.
By the banks of the Rhine, the beer gardens, hotels and great
houses were all smashed to pieces. In a space amongst the ruins which
formed a protected nest, there was a burnt-out German tank. Scat–
tered all round it ammunition lay on the ground-shells the shape of
Rhine wine bottles, still partly enclosed in their careful packings of
straw and fibre.
The great bridge was down, collapsed into the river. Close to
it, by a landing stage, an A.A. gun which was being used as an
anti-tank gun, was still pointing with exemplary precision at the end
of the bridge on the opposite side of the Rhine.
Bonn stank as much as Cologne or as the towns of the Ruhr.
In addition to the persistent smell which never left one alone-like an
Over-Good Companion- the town was affiicted by a plague of small
green midges which bred I suppose in all the rubble and also in ruh–
bish heaps, for no rubbish had been collected for several months
and in many streets there were great heaps of waste with grass and
even tall potato plants growing out of a mass of grit and stalks and
peel.
At night these small flies crowded thick on the walls of the
bedrooms. At mealtimes they got into any and every drink. One night
I went for a walk along the Rhine. When I returned, the sun had set
and the flies lay like a thick bank of London pea-soup fog on either
side of the river. They swarmed into my eyes, nostrils and hair, dis–
solving into a thin green splodge of slime when I tried to brush
them off.
Every few hours during the day, Bonn was shaken by a con–
siderable explosion . This was caused by attempts on the part of the
