"How many marks have you?" he asked.
"No marks at all," I answered, "that is Swedish money." As he was a nice, sensible, clever man, he asked no more questions but sealed it for me.
It was Sunday when I left Berlin. The train was almost empty. I had my money in my hand grip, and in the other hand I had my precious stove which had a case like a kodak. At Rostock a man came through the train and asked to see our passports. He only looked at the passports of the Germans in the coupé with me, but he took my pass and wrote a long list about it on a slip of paper. The people in the coupé stared at me.
At noon we came to Warnemünde. At the door of the military customs we were given a number. Mine was "J 19." Then we went into a room where a soldier called out the numbers. There were only about thirty of us in all, I was the only enemy—the rest were Germans and Danes. When the man called "J 19" I handed him my pass and my permit. "Oh, a Passierschein." he said. The passes were shoved through a little slot in the wall, and as soon as our pass examination was through, we were let into a room where our baggage was examined.
As I entered the room, a soldier stepped forward. He had my pass in his hand. "What is your name?" he asked, and that question was the only question that I was asked when I crossed the frontier out of Germany.
A soldier in a black uniform opened my trunk first. I showed him the permit I had for the stove. He looked at the sealed packages and then he passed me on to another soldier in gray. This soldier took the wrapping off all my sealed packages, and then he asked me if I had any other writing or books in my trunk, and when I said, "No," he closed the trunk again without taking one thing out of it or looking at it at all. This man spoke rather good English, and when I asked him where he had learned it he answered, "Talking to little American children that I know."
Then he told me that I would have to be searched and he gave me the number "91." He carried my baggage to the dressing-room for me. Here a woman searched me. I had to take off my skirt and waist and shoes, but I was not torn apart, and the searching was anything but thorough. When I came out I was given my pass again and told I could get on the boat. The whole performance did not take more than fifteen minutes.
On the boat I had to have my baggage searched again by the Danish officials, but this was merely a farce, for they knew well enough that nobody was trying to export anything out of Germany. The dinner on the Warnemünde boat was wonderful—everything possible and without a card. We all sat down and ate and ate and ate. After dinner, lovely girls came around selling the most wonderful strawberries. But when we were out about an hour the sea got very rough. Afterwards we left the boat and boarded a train on the island. Before the train started we all stood in the corridor of the train looking at the boat we had just left. It was all spattered down the sides with red. Our thoughts were all the same, and then in the silence, the piping voice of a little German girl was heard, "Wie schade um die Erdbeeren!" And we all echoed her thoughts, "Too bad about the strawberries."
Transcriber's Note: