The crashes and flashes of light in the dark of night sounded to the five-year-old child like a terrible thunderstorm. "No," said Inge's friend Reinhard, one year older and wiser. "it was an air raid." Countless times after that night late in August of 1940, Inge fled with her mother and younger brother to improvised bomb shelters in cellars wherever they were living. The wail of the air raid siren became a plaintive cry echoing the plight of the lost and wounded. The city of her birth and childhood rocked with bombs and blazing fire as the war rumbled on.
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