Random Acts

Random Acts begins with the invasion of Luxembourg the summer of 1914, during the first required visit Susanna Strashoffer Von Heldorf made from the United States to visit her elderly grandfather in Luxembourg. When the Germans moved into the country in August, she and her grandfather lost themselves in the chaos and headed for a remote cabin in the mountains of Northern Italy. Though she missed her adoptive parents and their sons, she and her grandfather and her small dog, Minnie, got along well and were self-sufficient. Susanna, a gifted musician, dreamed of her music and composed many works without the aide of her beloved piano. Her grandfather, hunted for food every day and then in March of that first year, he died of a heart attack, leaving Susanna alone in a strange place to fend for herself.This is the first-hand account of her experiences as she fought for survival during the four-and-a-half years the war lasted. She describes the freezing winter she spent with her grandfather in a cabin high in the Alps and about burying him in a cave after his death in the early spring of 1915. She also tells us about the time she was 'rescued' by Italian soldiers and of the next winter nearly starving to death while living alone in a cave at the foothills of the mountains. She recounts the nightmare of being tried for treason after helping an injured enemy soldier and of subsequently being beaten nearly to death by the Italian authorities. Along with the bad, she remembers the good times when she entertained the Italian troops with her music and was thought to be an angel by many soldiers because she mended their bodies in the field hospitals with such expertise, yet appeared to be a child. The city of Verona buzzed with stories of her supernatural powers after she performed a cesarean section on a dead woman and saved the baby’s life. The widows and mothers left behind when their husbands went off to war loved her for keeping them fed and for teaching them how to survive when there was little food to keep their families from starving.Towards the end of the war, Susanna decided that she could never return to the home of her adoptive parents, the wealthy VonHelldorf’s of Bayland, Ohio. Too much had happened and she wasn’t the same spoiled little rich girl who had gone to Luxembourg four years before. She believed that until the day one of the Von Helldorf sons arrived in the field hospital where she was staying, his leg amputated. That day her decision was challenged. She began to renew old ties and eventually went to live with her adopted mother’s family in France and then after the war, finally returned to the United States as the very young bride of Joseph Von Helldorf, one of the other sons. Her adoptive father, Rolph, was unhappy to learn that she had married his oldest son out of the Church’s sanctions and protested loudly when he heard the news, but after an unhappy confrontation, love and understanding won out and there was a compromise.