Bertha mused to herself that, even amid massive devastation, normal funcrions of life still continued.

Normality in that case was her housemate Angelika's daughter being bent over the young mother's knee, skirt up and panties at knee level, for a sound spanking coutesy of a wooden hairbrush.

The resounding smacks of flat hardwood against tender ten-year-old bumcheeks were interspersed with the sound of British bombs exploding within the city above, creating a bizarre cacaphony of family discipline and mass destruction within the dank, marginally-lighted  confines of the underground shelter. Almost immediately a thitd sound, that of Gretchen's distressed weeping, intermixed with the others.

The chastisement was initially administered with reluctance since Angelika, like many of the witnesses in the crowded area, sympathized with her daughter's plight. The youngster's overwrought outburst--"Please, God, stop the war! We'll do anything you want, just end it!"--reflected the clandestine attitude of many people, and everyone's nerves were on edge due to battlefield defeats, high casualty rates and especially the incessant bombing that produced continual sleep deprivation. But several Party officials had heard the desperate plea and defeatism wasn't officially tolerated, so Gretchen had to be parentally punished or her mother would've faced possible arrest.

Bertha recalled a similar public punishment that she'd experienced in the Berlin Tiergarten twenty-six years earlier, a panties-down maternal hairbrushing for complaining about that war--not death and destruction by bombing but the constant hunger and austerity caused by the Allied blockade Her loving mother had been genuinely motivated by patriotism, not reacting to fear, but it had nonetheless been the longest, hardest spanking of her childhood. In retrospect that earlier war, with few civilian casualties and little fighting on German territory, seemed like a more civilized conflict.

Gretchen's chastisement was becoming frenzied and furious, the girl wailing desperately as the flat-backed brush resoundingly plastered her reddening rump. Angelika was under extreme stress--relocated to Bertha's house due to the bombing destruction of her own home and deathly worried about the fate of her husband,  a Wehrmacht lieutenant captured at Stalingrad eighteen months earlier--which she was frantically releasing upon her hapless daughter's exposed posterior.

Bertha realized that Gretchen's paddling should be halted but felt hesitant to appear unpatriotic by interefering with parental punishment discouraging defeatism--the consequences could be much worse than her own girlhood walloping.

"Stop, Angelika, you've disciplined her enough." The voice, soft but authoritative, was that of middle-aged  Hadda Steinmetz, wife of the deputy gauleiter. Her hand touched the woman's shoulder, the spanking immediately ceased and Angelika remorsefully hugged the blubbering child.

"I'm sorry to punish you so severely, darling, but you left me no choice." The maternally comforting words were carefully chosen. "Please don't put me in that position again."

Taut smiles of relief filled the shelter, but they were merely momentary. Gretchen's spanking was over, but the war continued...