Lied oor Niemandsland summary

Evert returns from being a captive of war a year after the town is divided in two by a new boundary line/a fence manned by guards
- He was away for five years
- The old market plain was flattened
- The day he returns his mother is waiting at the station
- She leads him home:
* It probably looks different and he won't know the way
* She's happy to see him
* She wants to tell him about Anna his fiancee who is on the other side - he wanted to marry her
* It's dangerous
- She tells him a boy was shot one night by the fence
- He finds work in the factory behind the station and every night on his way home he stares across the fence to Niemandsland (no man's land)
- One night he comes home and a girl is there - his mother is trying to set him up
* She wants grandchildren
- She says he's throwing his youth away - Anna is engaged to another
- His mother says he people on the other side are bad, they throw stones and curse them with names they learnt on the other side
- The next evening he goes home and gets his guitar
- He goes to the fence and tells the guard his girlfriend is on the other side
- He says he'll respect the fence and starts singing
- The guards find it amusing and want to see if she's still his girlfriend
- She didn't come and he went home
- He tells his mother that night that if Anna comes to listen to him, he'll marry whoever his mother wants
- The next night he goes again and plays and sings to her
* He sees Anna coming
* She was wearing a red dress and braided hair
* She sings along with him
* The townspeople gathered and listened to them, some sang along
- He thanked Anna afterwards
* She confirms she's engaged to someone else
* He says it doesn't matter, because she came
* He says one day the town will be one again and maybe their children will marry. He hopes God will bless her.
- For one night, and for a long time in remembrance, song crossed the boundary of Niemandsland to create a proud peace out of one man's pain and to be a messenger to all who heard