Growing up in Germany (1922-1947)
Dorothea Helga Reinhardt, known as Helga (the Saxony tradition is to be known by the name preceding your surname) was born in Niederpoyritz, just outside Dresden in eastern Germany, to an English mother and German father. Her sisters were Erica, Sonja and Wilma. She also had a brother who died in childhood.
At the start of WWII, she was just 17. Yet it was Helga who made a rudimentary bomb shelter for the family. Despite being of questionable strategic value, Dresden was bombed mercilessly with almost 4000 tonnes of high-explosive bombs and incendiary devices in February 1945. During one such raid, Helga pleaded with a young soldier to get into the shelter with her family. He declined as he was not allowed to leave his post. When the raid was over, the young man had been spread all over the garden by a bomb. It seemed likely that Helga’s industriousness had saved her family’s lives but she always remembered that young soldier with sadness..
Also, at that time, Helga worked in a factory that produced highly flammable photographic film. At one point, a bomb had come through the roof of an office and landed in a leather chair – it did not explode – another close escape.
At the end of the war, as the Russians moved into Germany, Helga and Wilma fled for the West, experiencing life as refugees. Showing great initiative, Helga secreted 2 flags in her pants – one British and one German – so that she could wave the appropriate flag depending on which soldiers they saw. Nevertheless, at one point, they ended up in cells overnight. They had been arrested by American soldiers; she needed bigger pants for more flags. Eventually, though, they reached the west, where she met and fell in love with an English soldier named Ronnie Smith.