When the sirens sounded, the tavern emptied immediately as everyone fled to the bunkers. Gisela and her girlfriend began running to the shelter. But then Gisela remembered the sweater her mother had knit for her. She had left it on a chair in the bar. In such situations, impulses sometimes win out over reason. The delay was not long, but it was too long. With sweater now in hand, Gisela raced to the bunker, but to her dismay, the heavy doors had been closed and she could not get in.
Now the drone of planes, the whistle of falling bombs, and thunderous explosions filled the air. Yes, the air. As it happened, the fires depleted the oxygen in the air to such an extent that everyone in the bunker suffocated to death while Gisela, who couldn’t get in, now escaped with her life, staggering around phosphorous fires and stepping over smoldering debris and worse. Miles away in Hundisburg, her mother had heard the planes, had heard the explosions and seen the glow of the once beautiful city, which that night sustained 90% destruction. Sick with worry for her daughter, her eyes scanned the south until amazingly, around sunrise her daughter approached, physically unharmed.