Stories from 47 Regt days . . .
Chris Fagan
May, 2005.
Off next week to Germany. I will be calling in on Brackel on
the way home; a friend that I used to know in the old days is still living there, still goes to the Haus am Markt. I didn't have a lot of time last time I was there as I
was only passing through on my way back to the ferry at Zeebrugge but I will spend at least a couple of days there, see if I can find an old (she will be now) ex, a girl called Helga Renneman.
Her dad was a wing commander in the last war. He was a pilot in the Luftwaffe but fell foul of the nazi political officer and ended up in Dachau, from where he escaped to Switzerland. He came to England in '39 and joined the British Army in the Pioneer Corps.
When war broke out he was, as an anti-Nazi, allowed to join the RAF and ended up interrogating German prisoners of war, ending the war as a winco. Got the shock of my life the first time I went to his house when I was going out with his daughter; he brought out his RAF uniform complete with medals. He owned a plant and flower import business in Herdecke.
Update 2006
Sorry to say that Kurt Strellau died several years ago, last time I was there I went to see if he was around but the place where he had his yard and his house and the greenhouses is now a part of a housing estate. An old friend, Tao, (I only knew him as that) told me that Kurt had died in the seventies.
And as far as Helga was concerned, nobody there knew of her whereabouts.