To describe growing up in Germany between 1930 and 1950 is not an easy task, “if the scenario is written for an audience that has never personally suffered under a dictatorship or felt the horror of total war.”
But a writer published in the current edition of Echoes magazine has undertaken that task in the first of a series of articles titled “Irmgard: A German girl comes to Maine.”
Raised in Munich, Irmgard Pierson was Irmgard Neihsl when she met Hugh Pierson of Caribou, a pilot in the U.S. Air Force stationed in Germany after World War II. Her story, in Echoes No. 109, portrays a 10-year-old child’s view of Hitler and describes how school children were evacuated into the country “when the bombing of the German cities became brutal.”
Part I concludes with Irmgard’s painful departure from friends and family at the train station in Munich and the airport in Frankfurt after she married her “pilot in shining armor” and left her homeland for a new life in America.
“Irmgard” is one of two stories about German war brides in the July-September 2015 issue of Echoes. Martie Pritchard of Chapman celebrates and muses over her mother’s frugality in “Beyond Practical: ‘Making do’ in the extreme,” a chapter from a memoir titled “From Bombs to Babies.”
“Our mother, Eva Poppendieck Brabant, survived years of deprivation with an appreciation of the many gifts bestowed upon her as a war bride in the United States,” writes Pritchard. She was used to “making do,” so when she had a second mastectomy in her later years, she reasoned there must be an alternative to expensive prostheses. Her daughter’s recollection is full of love and humor.
Echoes 109 also celebrates cows, beginning on the front cover with a serious-looking member of the Scottish highland herd on Orchard Hill Farm in Woodland, owned by Gail and Stanley Maynard, photographed by Michael Gudreau of Presque Isle.
Inside the magazine, Lille native Roger Parent wonders whether a cow can be called Acadian because it is owned by an Acadian family. In “My Acadian Cow” Parent reflects on the significance of the cow in all rural families and expresses gratitude for the World Acadian Congress, which inspired families to rekindle such memories and to reaffirm the values that shaped their lives.
Daisy is the name of another favorite cow immortalized in Echoes 109. She was the lucky recipient of a bell that writer Barbara Shaw of Williamstown, New Brunswick, encouraged her grandfather to save. In writing “The Cow Bell,” Shaw remembers “the things Grandpa did, just for the pure joy of doing them.”
Feature stories in the current Echoes focus on Clara Piper of Caribou, generations of Nelsons in Stockholm and hidden treasures discovered during restoration of a former church in Lille.
Polly Earl of Fort Fairfield discovered a poem in a discarded wooden box at the landfill, deciphered the hand-written message and submitted it to Echoes in search of its author. “Limestone A.F.B.” probably expresses the feelings of many a serviceman stationed at Loring Air Force Base before it closed in 1994.
Seven other poems appear in this issue of the magazine, along with a short story by Gordon Hammond of Westfield titled “Light in the Window” and columns by Houlton native John Dombek and Glenna Johnson Smith of Presque Isle.
Dedicated to rediscovering community, Echoes is published quarterly by Echoes Press and printed in Presque Isle by PrintWorks. The magazine is sold on northern Maine newsstands and by subscription. For information visit echoesofmaine.com.
