Murray to Henry Victor Morgan, 4 June 1939 -- "a cheery Heil Hitler"

Murray and Rosa launched their Klepper folding kayak, the first of several Romurs, at Ulm on June 2, 1939. The plan was to paddle to the Black Sea -- through Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria and Romania -- and then head home from Turkey. They probably would have made it before the WWII intervened, had they not had so much fun along the way.

Starting down the river

June 4, 1939

Ingolstadt, Germany

Dear Dad:

Two days ago Rosa and I lifted the Romur into the Danube at Ulm, just across the river from the "Munster," a great cathedral which Ulmsters proudly boast has the tallest spire in the world. There was no one to say goodbye to us as we clambered into the boat, fastened on our backrest lifebelts, and pushed away from shore. In the distance we could hear the automatic chirping of a cookoo and we weren't so sure he was wrong. 

But in a minute our doubts were dispelled. We shot easily beneath the middle arch of the three-arched stone bridge (a task which had worried us some because while the Danube is very smooth, it has a good current and we were not used to bridges in fast water) and in a few moments we were idling along in the open country.

The most surprising thing about the Danube is that its shores are relatively unsettled. We float along between green fields, our horizon fixed by some gently rolling hills on which stand a few red roofed houses, in a cluster, or an isolated baroque church with a radish shaped tower, the walls white and gleaming, the tower green or dull red. 

Suddenly the scenery will change and the forest will creep down to the shore. Elms and willows will rise on each side of us, and we will see men and women with scythes cutting the tall green grass which grows on the bank beside the forest. Red-cheeked, broad-beamed people these scythe wielders, and they answer our waves with a fascist palm flip and a cheery Heil Hitler.

Often there is no one on the shore, and we slip along with the current and occasional bursts of energetic paddling. Ducks whir up from the water, blotches of white and brown between two whirring wings. Occasionally we will startle a great, long-legged blue heron and he will pound into the air, flap his great wings with calm but puzzled dignity, and come down virtually where he started. Twice we have seen wild deer coming to the water to drink, and yesterday we caught sight of the plumy brown tail and pointed ears of a fox.

River map key, with helpful translations such as Get Out! and Not Possible

After one such stretch of river, which bore a striking resemblance to a tamed Nisqually, we swept around a curve to be confronted with the grey battlements of Lauingen castle. Another isolated stretch was broken unexpectedly by the walled city of Neuberg, which looked untouched since the time it was first erected upon a hill commanding a broad stretch of the Danube. 

Although we did not start until noon, Rosa and I covered 78 kilometers (roughly 50 miles) on our first day.

Sunburned but  satisfied, we jerked the Romur's nose upstream at Donauworth, paddled hard for a minute, and entered the quiet water of the Wornitz. There, about 800 yards upstream, we saw our first "Kanu-Verein," which is an aquatic autocamp. For the cost of a dollar we had a magnificent dinner of half a dozen eggs, fried spuds, bread and milk, a breakfast of tea and rolls, storage for the boat overnight, and a room for ourselves. 

... summary of Donauworth's role in the Thirty Years War ...

No city would be more peaceful today, however, When we left our boothaus about noon, we drifted idly along the Wornitz, past the old city walls, now covered with fish nets hung up by the townsfolk to dry. 

Last night we spent in a great pile of a building, an armory which has been converted into a boothaus. The walls are six feet thick, the windows narrow into slits, our room is reached by a circular staircase which winds narrowly through the wall. The beds are as uncompromising as the building. They wouldn't give an inch. The "springs" were slabs of pine, the pillows seemed to be stuffed with cannon balls. We both slept soundly all night. Bed and breakfast: 50 cents. ...

Hotel Drei Mohren [three moors]

Deggendorf, Germany

Thursday, June 8

Dear Dad,

It was a dark night on the Danube, and it gave promise of getting cold. We had underestimated the slowness of the current and overestimated our paddling speed, so when the pastels of twilight had faded completely into the swelling darkness, we found ourselves miles from Straubing, the city we had picked on the map as our day's destination.

Since "caution" is our watchword on this trip, night navigation was not for us. With our flashlight refusing to give up more than a hopelessly feeble glow, about as powerful as the beam of the radium dial on a watch, we pulled up to the tarry side of a great, black, evil-smelling river barge, and prepared to spend a long night there. Then down the river from Walhalla floated two saving angels -- on a barge.

Wally is a Czech,  a dentist, a sportsman and a minor linguist. Wilma is a Sudetan German, a sportswoman, a minor linguist, and Wally's frau. Making their second trip down the Danube to the Black Sea, they had left Ulm in their canoe only a few hours before us, made stops in Donauworth and Ingolstadt, as we had, and reached Regensburg about five hours before us. Instead of stopping at the bootshaus where we left the Romur, they had decided to try to shoot the old bridge at Regensburg and spend the night below the city.

The bridge at Regensburg (Ratisbon, to the French) is no ordinary span. It has stood athwart the Danube since the 11th century, and most of the original rocks are still in place. Its narrow arches have always been the bane of upper Danube navigation -- the Crusaders, who took the Danube route to the Holy Land, portaged when they came to this bridge -- and it is only natural that city and province authorities have made no effort to make the bridge easier to pass. As it stands, the Old Bridge of Regensburg makes its city the head of commercial shipping on the river.

In the course of time all but two of the arches have become so choked with weeds and sand that they are absolutely impassable. Consequently almost the entire water of the Danube is funneled through the remaining pair of arches. About fifteen feet upstream from the bridge, the river gathers itself and leaps forward. It surges at the two arches, roaring and shaking itself like some wild animal. On the downstream side of the bridge, the Danube indulges in a startling series of acrobatics. Dangerous at all times, the bridge is especially bad with the river is at flood level, and it is near that now.

Rosa and I have been overjoyed to find that there has been a new canal cut through this year which eliminated the necessity of our portaging. But Wilma and Wally disdained the thought of quiet water. With their six years of canoeing  experience, they defied the danger spot on the Danube. The gesture was ill-timed. Later in the year they might have succeeded, but the Danube, at full strength, slapped their kayak with a wave as it neared the bridge. The boat veered too close to the left side of the arch. Wilma's paddle touched one of the great stone blocks. The boat swung into the wall. A long jagged cut appeared in the hull (the only way a folding boat can be sunk) and Wilma and Wally were swimming.

Our Saving-Angels-to-be rescued their clothes but the kayak went down to join McGinty. Since there were no folding boats for sale in Regensburg, Wilma and Wally bought a peasant's boat for $4.00 and are going downstream to Passau where they can get another canoe.

Earlier in the evening of our day of trouble, Rosa and I had passed them as they paddled their unwieldy craft downstream. The German peasant's boat is a cross between a misbegotten gondola and a malformed gravel scow. It is blunt at each end, about 25 feet long, 5 feet across at the widest point, 2 feet at the narrowest. It is propelled with huge canoe paddles, and the only seats in it ware 2x10 planks which may be placed anywhere across the boat as they overlap the sides by a good two feet. ...

"Wo zu ist going?" I yelled at them.

"We don't speak English," shouted Wally, in English. I doubt that he guessed what language I was accustomed to using from my questions, although he surely must have known it wasn't German. Earlier in the evening, however, when we had passed their boat, Rosa and I had been bellowing our milk-curdling version of some American songs, and I think Wally recognized us as the emitters of those shrieks.

"Straubing? Slaufen?" I essayed.

"Ja, slaufen."

"Ve go mit!" Rosa bellowed, on hearing that they were going someplace, anyplace to sleep -- and I do mean bellowed. Looking back at it, the next half hour seems funny. At the time it was more long than anything else.

Wally and Wilma tried talking to us in every language at their disposal. First one would spout for about two minutes, and then ask "Verstehen?" We wouldn't have caught a word, but thinking that we had paddled far enough to find a place to go to bed, would ask hopefully, "Slaufen?"

"Nein, Nein, Nix Slaufen," and then off they would go in Roumanian, or Turkish, or Magyar, or Serb. We found out the next day that they were trying to tell us that Wally knew of a farmer who could let us sleep in this barn and wanted to know if we would join them, but at the time we could find no linguistic common denominator. They knew everything but French and English, our two languages, and since our German is based on sign language, it was of no use to use in the dark.

They needn't have bothered with the questioning, for Wally would have had to pull a gun on us to get rid of us after he had admitted they were sleep-seeking. Our angels finally realized that we intended to stick to them like chewing gum to your best suit, so they just led the way.

It about half an hour we were literally hitting the hay in a German farmer's barn.

The next day we covered remarkably little distance. In the morning we paddled on to Straubing with Wilma and Wally. While they cooked their own breakfast on the bank, we went into town, had marvellous scrambled eggs at a restaurant, and signed the local canoe club's guest book. It was afternoon by the time we were on the river again, for we did a little sightseeing while in the city. The day was pretty hot, and we were all feeling lazy, so we pulled into shore at a shady spot, Wally dug out his fishing poles, and we spent the rest of the day catching two fish. Rosa, Wilma and I went over to a nearby farmhouse and bought eggs and butter. Dinner was cooked and served on the edge of the Danube. That night we slept in the hay at the farmhouse where we had bought the eggs.

There is considerable question in my mind just who were the sightseers as far as our visit to the farm was concerned. We were the first Americans ever to visit the place, and Men from Mars couldn't have caused more excitement. The little boys followed me all over the place, and the little girls hid their faces whenever I looked at them. The barefooted frau of the farm, on hearing that I was from America, wanted to know if I were English, and when I said I was from the "Oo S Ah" she wanted to know if it were North or South America. the whole family turned out to help dig fish worms, and everyone handed his to Rosa, just to hear her say "Dunka shoen."

Two nights of barn sleeping in a row were enough for Rosa and me, so today we paddled down here to Deggendorf, and have a room with hot and cold running water, and an honest-to-gosh bathroom down the hall.

June 12, 1939

Passau, Germany

Boathouse

Dear Dad:

Our luck as to weather shifted here in Passau and for the past two days we have been held up waiting for a rainstorm to lift. Tomorrow morning, thunder or not, we are going to start again on the river for Vienna, which we should reach in about four or five days, depending on how many castled crags we climb.

Passau, although a well-known town, is not the place I would have chosen to spend a couple of unexpected days. It is a little too much of a tourist center. In fact, with the exception of two big breweries, the only occupation of the 32,000 people here seems to be catering to tourists.

In one of the letters which you wrote us in England, you remarked that you preferred to stay on the beaten track where you meet the people of a country. It is for the same reason that Rosa and I like to leave it: we feel that on the beaten tourist track one is all too likely to meet tourists, with a capital "T" (how much she spent on her operation, nothing but the best, you know the type) or the people who cater to such tourists. On the other hand, we are meeting the real Germans, the people who fill the little villages which are so closely scattered across the country. ...

...

With the exception of the Overhaus, the architectural pride and joy of Passau is its three-domed church, an unmitigated monstrosity, unsuited to either its natural surroundings or its fellow buildings. In a town marked by the simplicity of its dwellings, some exhibitionistic architect planted this unhealthy pile of florid baroque brick. A fragment from a Turkish nightmare, it dominates the city, its three green radish domes visible for miles. It reminds me of the story about Vernon Louis Parrington (who wrote the three books on American literature which we were reading shortly before Rosa and I left Tacoma) and one of the buildings on the campus. He looked at the plans for it and said, "My God, an architectural abortion." He died the same year and the building was named after him. ...

Murray asked for news from home, saying that all they had learned was a couple of sports scores and a fire in Chicago.

It isn't quite accurate to say that that is all we have heard about America. Copies of the German Jew-baiting paper, Der Stürmer, are posted on the city bulletin boards in this district almost every day, and we run across them now and again. There is usually a page of cartoons, about half of which are devoted to "exposing" the Jewish control of America and the other democracies. Roosevelt is thought to be under Jewish influence in all of his international policies.

Our impression of public opinion here is that America is relatively popular as a country, but that Roosevelt, who is believed to be acting contrary to the wishes of the American public, is cordially disliked. I make it a point not to mention that I am a journalist when at home, unless there is no way of avoiding doing so, for the people here believe that every American paper spends three-quarters of its time libeling Germany.

Whenever we tell people we are Americans, they invariably remark: "Now that you're here, you can see that all those awful stories your papers have about us are not true." Last night for instance, a strapping big canoeist from Hamburg boomed, "It is good that Americans come here. Now you can see we are not barbarians."

While America as a country is fairly popular and Roosevelt as a statesman very unpopular, we as Americans (and sportsmen) have been treated with generosity which is frankly unbelievable. People go miles out of their way to help us in every little thing. Here are a few examples:

1. When we were marooned the other night, we went with our Czech and Sudetan acquaintances to a farmhouse and asked if we could spend the night in the barn. (I told you about that in my last letter.) The farmer not only agreed, but came out to the barn to open two fresh bales of straw so that we would be sure to be warm.

2. In Passau we were hunting for the Klepper folding boat shop, so that we could buy a celluloid map case. No one at the boathouse spoke English, and the directions were most  complicated. Finally one of the men motioned for us to follow him. He led us to his car, shooed us into it, drove us to the shop, which was at least a mile from the boathouse.

3. In Regensburg we were trying to find a hotel or Guesthouse. We had arrived in the town late at night and there were no spare beds at the boathouse. Regensburg is no tourist center and has only two or three hotels, none of which we could find. Finally we went up to a young fellow on the street and asked for directions. He insisted on accompanying us, and furthermore wanted to carry all our bags. I really believe he was injured when we only let him have one. The first place he took us was full and so he walked about two more miles with us. Previous experience with helpful Germans had taught me that an attempt at a tip would be a grievous insult.

4. When Wally and Wilma found that we were going to the Black Sea, they immediately offered to act as our guides. Wally told us he was going to buy a tent in Passau and instead of getting one for two people he would get one for four so we could stay with them. He looked really hurt when we said that we would usually be staying in the hotels and guesthouses along the way. He definitely did not expect us to share in the cost of the big tent.

These are a few of the examples of generosity, but they are only a few. They are samples, and not the examples. After two weeks here, our opinion of the German people could not be higher. As for the government, we are far less ready to condemn than we were when we were at home. While there is much in German policy with which we cannot agree, we at least are getting an ever more sympathetic understanding of the background of that policy. Of one thing I am sure, our opinions on the European scene are much better balanced than they were before we arrived here.

By the way, while we have been here, I have reread the last Master Christian a couple of times. It seems to me that it is the best lesson you have written in several years, and if the others in the series are of equal quality they should be brought out in book form, or at least the copies of the M.C. should be bound. What sort of a response have you had to this one? For my part I liked best the two paragraphs:

"It is all so very simple, so very livable, so very lovable. Truly to the faith that sees, life's burden is light. There is no weary striving, no holding anxious thought. There need be no horror of loneliness, no brooding sorrow, no sighings of despair before fullness of illumination is realized.

"The prodigal away from his father's house was always a son. There was never a veil between himself and his father. He did not have to travail in pain to become as son; all he had to do when wearied of the husks of materiality was to return to his father's house where there was "plenty and to spare.'"

....

I have been doing quite a bit of writing recently, and I am positive that some of the things will sell. To date, however, I have just mailed one. It went to the New Republic. ... As Pop Jones, in the U.W. journalism department, has always said: The secret of selling 'em is to keep mailing 'em.

...

Love, as ever,

Murray and Rosa