By Martin Allison Booth
The Wolf in the Woods, originally published in Estonia as Hunt Metsas by the highly-regarded Eesti Raamat, is now available in an English language version.
It is based on one family’s experiences during the turmoil of the Second World War. A fascinating blend of biography and historical fiction it is presented in the form of a family saga and a wartime thriller. It is an epic tale of a people enduring the consequences of others’ political ambitions. It is ultimately – as it was for hundreds of thousands of Estonians – a tragic tale of loss and exile. It is the story of ordinary folk living extraordinary lives by being forced to make impossible decisions in situations beyond their control.
Much of what is depicted in the story actually happened.
I am of Estonian descent. My mother and her family are all Estonian; coming primarily from Tallinn. My mother’s and grandfather’s experiences are central to the story. I have chosen, though, to give them other names as I have had to fictionalise certain events. The truth of what they had to endure is nonetheless absolutely central to the narrative. However, getting to every fact and sequence of events sometimes, at this distance, and through the fog of war, occupation and exile, is impossible. This, many Estonians whose families endured similar hardships, will confirm. But, as with most novels, the truth is always to be found on every page.
Much of what I believe happened comes from what my parents and others told me as I grew up. I have had many of these facts substantiated by further research – especially with the help of the Estonian National Maritime Museum
and the Evangelical Estonian Lutheran Church (EELK). However, not every fact is now in a position to be substantiated; hence why I chose to fictionalise the account.
Here’s what I have been able to establish.
My grandfather, along with his brother, was an Estonian Naval officer. He was a cadet in the War of Independence serving on ships such as Lembit and later Lennuk. He received the Cross of Liberty among other awards. After Independence, he was privileged to be sent, with his brother and Johannes Santpank, for further training in Britain with the Royal Navy. Santpank went on to be head of the Estonian Navy.
Back in Estonia, my grandfather was, among other things, the liaison officer between the Estonian Navy and the British, with particular emphasis on intelligence matters. As well as being a key member of the Estonian Navy’s intelligence work, at one point in his career, he was Commandant of the Estonian Naval Academy and in 1940, briefly, Navy Chief of Staff.
After the Soviets occupied Estonia in 1940, following the illegal Nazi-Soviet Pact dividing Europe between the two dictatorships, and at great risk of death or deportation, it is believed my grandfather sought to come over to the UK.
The story goes that the British were happy to have him, but were unable to accommodate his wife and children (my grandmother, mother and uncle).
Naturally, it was in his – and many Estonians’ – interest to side with (not work for) the Germans, instead. This was because the Germans were the most likely at the time to enable Estonia to return to Independence. The Germans accepted him and his family. Not least because, in the run-up to Operation Barbarossa, – their invasion of Russia. – my grandfather was of immense value to them in the Baltic. He might even have been Admiral Canaris’ head of Baltic intelligence. Canaris was the head of the German Intelligence service, the Abwehr.
As it has become clearer in postwar years, he was a loyal German but grew to become fervently anti-Nazi. He was part of the resistance movement along with such people as Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Both of whom were executed in the same prison at the same time at the end of the war.
It is my understanding that my grandfather actively participated in the rescue of Estonians during the wartime occupation; helping them to escape to Sweden. It is highly likely that he was also involved in the Courland Pocket
evacuations towards the end of the war, which involved many people from all three Baltic states.
At the very end of the war, however, it seems that he was captured by the Soviets. The night before he was to be either put on trial for his life or deported, though, the British intelligence service flew an aircraft out to rescue him and bring him back to the UK. Here, he spent two years in Wolverhampton as prisoner of war – but was in essence mainly being debriefed by British intelligence services. He and his family ended up in Sweden where he worked for the British at the Allied High Commission in Stockholm. He died in 1964.
Meanwhile, my grandmother, mother and uncle, ended up being refugees in Königsberg. My grandmother even as they went into exile, was already dying of a brain disease. My ten-year-old mother had to cope, amongst other things with the war, her mother’s terminal illness, and her double-agent father’s absence whilst living at the heart of the Nazi regime. My grandmother, out of her wits on medication, tried twice to commit suicide. At one point, her and her children’s home suffered a direct hit from allied bombing.
At some point towards the end of the war, my grandmother died. This was at Groß Rhüden in the Harz mountains; the whereabouts of her grave and date of death are not known. During this time, a German woman, who my grandfather had come to know through the Abwehr, came and looked after my grandmother in her final months. She took the children under her wing after my grandmother’s death. Her father had been a Surgeon-General in the Prussian Army. After the war, she and the children came to live in Stockholm, where she eventually married my grandfather.
My mother met my father at the Allied High Commission in Stockholm, where they both worked. My mother was in the section seeking to resettle Estonian refugees in places like the USA, Canada and Australia. My father was head of security at the High Commission during this period. In the 1950s, my mother returned with him to the UK where they married. She died in 1988, just before the Singing Revolution and the return to Independence. She never made it home.
In 2015, I returned my grandfather’s medals on permanent loan to the National Maritime Museum in Tallinn. They have them, with photos and a biography of him, on display. Following the Museum’s refurbishment in 2019, they launched a major exhibition, focused on his naval career, as the entry point for exploring aspects of the Estonian Navy 1918-1940. This ran for a number of months and was accompanied by a major biography of my grandfather Pagide Pillutada (‘Storm-tossed’); written by two of the Museum’s academics and assisted with photographs and background information from me and my uncle.
The museum considers my grandfather to be a significant figure in Estonia’s fight for Independence, her inter-war years, and her subsequent struggles in the Second World War.
Many of the facts above come from my conversations with the Museum’s staff. I am particularly grateful for their help, advice and knowledge.
Excerpt from Wolf in the Woods:
The rusting passenger ship shoulders its way through the scrambled seas; beyond the outer harbour and off into the night. The fourth row of portholes, the lowest, dips itself into the restive sea; sometimes below the waterline, sometimes reaching out as if gasping for air. There, in a squalid little cabin, Leena, her ten-year-old daughter and her six-year-old son share one of six bunks. Little Maret wipes the filth from the single porthole with her elbow. She only succeeds in smearing the grease further. Peering into the night, her breath blossoms on the glass. She tries to catch a final glimpse of the lights of her home. She can see nothing but the sea; a giant’s chest heaving and falling.
A few hours later, failing to sleep, Maret whispers two questions into her mother’s ear. The two
questions that will echo in her mind and her heart every waking moment from that night onward:
When are we going home?
Where’s Father?
Wolf in the Woods is available to pre order:
- ISBN-10 178963461
- XISBN-13 978-1789634617
Amazon.com.au (and other online bookstores) sell it, and most bookshops will order a copy in for people if they give them the ISBN number.
The Eesti Raamat books are:
Hunt metsas. The Wolf in the Woods.
Karu Küüsis – which deals with the early days of the diaspora, particularly in Stockholm in the 1950s. My mother worked for the Allied High Commission in Estonia in the department helping to find Displaced Estonians new homes in US, Canada, Australia etc. and that is reflected in the story.
Kotkas langeb – will be published this autumn in Estonia. It is set in Stockholm, Britain and an Estonia under Soviet rule.
Toonekurg taeva all – Eesti Raamat have my draft of this. It is set all on one single day: August 23rd 1989. It looks at the Baltic chain, and the ripples that spread out over the diaspora.
Mesipuu poole – I am currently working on this. It deals with the lead up to, during, and immediately after the return to independence 1991/2 – and the possibility of return from exile for many tens of thousands of Estonians.
All of which I have or will have English Language versions of and will arrange for their publication over the next few years.
