I came across Ahead of the Bear when I was researching my mother-in-law's German family who were from Olsztyn/Allenstein. Unlike Annette's family, she didn't want to talk about her experiences fleeing from East Prussia at the end of WWII when the Russian army began their march into Prussia. A few details we found out over the years was the amount of people who had died strewn across the road and very little to eat. They ate lard to survive.
Ahead of the Bear gives an account of Annette's mother, Hildegard Behrendt, and her aunt Liesel. Other coincidences with our family is her mother's marriage to someone in the British army, her last name of Behrendt and her arrival in England in 1947.
The trek of thousands of German refugees escaping from Prussia was horrific with little or no food, freezing temperatures, gunfire, illness and crossing ice on the Vistula Lagoon (Baltic coast) where many drowned or were shot.
