Shamrocks and Oil Slicks by Fred A. Wilcox;

Author:Fred A. Wilcox;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: New York University Press
Published: 2019-03-07T16:00:00+00:00

Shell is committed to transparency as it builds trust. Trust is essential for a company that operates in our line of business, reflecting our core values of honesty, integrity and respect for people.

—SHELL OIL, PUBLIC RELATIONS MATERIAL

BETTY SHULTZ WELCOMES ME INTO the common room at her Kilcommon Lodge Holiday Hostel and begins by giving me some background. Times were tough in County Mayo when she and her husband, Fritz Shultz, arrived from Germany in the early 1980s. People were leaving to find work in England and America. Not wanting to take a job from anyone, the new immigrants hoped to create something new and vital, something to share in the place that had given them a very warm welcome. They renovated and extended a 200-year-old building in Pullathomas and, in 1984, opened their hostel, surrounded by a stream, gardens, and mature trees.

Born in 1957, Betty grew up on an isolated farm in postwar northern Germany. Her parents went shopping twice a year, and the family was otherwise self-sufficient, making almost everything themselves.

“My mother was the local district nurse,” says Betty. “I knew little about my country, just our farm. We didn’t even have television until I was twelve, and my dad allowed us to watch one hour a week. So we had little knowledge about the rest of the world.

“I left home and started my nurse’s training; it was an eye opener seeing many patients with amputated limbs and other serious injuries, a very impressive reminder of what had happened not that long ago.”

During the war, Betty’s mother had lived in Dresden, one of the German cities destroyed by Allied bombing campaigns. She told stories about surviving fire-bomb raids and losing her home, as well as a good bit of her identity. She was struggling to regain certain parts of herself.

Betty’s maternal grandfather, a German general, returned home in 1955 on the last train carrying prisoners of war from Russia. He had been in Russian prisons for many years, his family never knowing if he was still alive.

“My grandfather came back to a very changed country,” Betty says. “My mother was about to get married, and soon her children were born. I have good memories of my grandfather as a grandfather. He was playful, a great storyteller who always took us to the beach. I saw the many deep scars and wounds on his body, one on his back so deep I could have put my whole hand into it. And the adults would be in the sitting room, off-limits to children, talking about serious things, like living with the new reality of Germany.”

A soldier in both world wars, Betty’s grandfather died when she was eleven, which was unfortunate because Betty wanted to ask him many questions.

Some of Betty’s schoolteachers clung to Nazi ideology, while others assigned the writings of concentration camp survivors. Suffering from a severe case of post-traumatic stress disorder, one teacher would suddenly shout that the school was being bombed. He’d order students to crawl out of the room and into a shelter.

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