The Day the Nazis Came by Stephen Matthews

Author:Stephen Matthews [Stephen R. Matthews]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781786063366
Publisher: John Blake Publishing
Published: 2016-03-20T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 10

My Four-Leaf Clover

I have to say our family have always been most regular in the conduct of their daily ablutions. Normally, I would wake at an early hour, before anyone else was up and about, and, as usual, I would find a small half-square of chocolate on the horizontal metal bar that acted as a hard and uncomfortable headboard. Once I had consumed the chocolate, I would take my German-issue aluminium mug and slip out quietly to fetch a cup of water.

On this particular morning I was approaching the concrete washing troughs, perhaps a little bleary-eyed, when a ghostly female apparition with long pendulous breasts suddenly sat up right in front of me. Well, I yelled – I mean, I really yelled – and at the same time I dropped my aluminium mug, leaving it echoing loudly as it bounced around on the stone floor, and then I hightailed it back to our barrack room.

I immediately jumped into my bunk and covered my head under the old blanket, while my mother, becoming a little alarmed, asked me what the matter was: all I could say in reply was I had just seen a ghost. My mother was out of her top bunk in a trice and careered down the passageway to confront the ghost, and I soon heard loud voices raised in anger. It turned out that one of the women deportees, finding the atmosphere in her barrack room to be too hot and stuffy, had decided to cool off by lying down in a narrow trough of cold water, thinking no one would be about so early in the morning. After this contretemps and such a fierce exchange of words, the matter appeared settled and forgotten – well, almost.

I am afraid to say I don’t recall very much about schooldays in Biberach. I can easily recollect the kindness of the headmaster, Mr Foote, and I know Auntie Joy Godwin was a teacher, as was the lovely Miss Gwen Barnet. I can also remember where the school was housed in Barrack 23 near the Red Cross stores, which suited me extremely well because it meant I could easily visit my father after school.

I believe we didn’t spend all day in school but went along most afternoons for just about two hours. Still, I do recall one important lesson, which was all about good manners. Our teacher stressed the importance of good manners in our daily lives and how it behoved us to wish all and sundry a hearty good morning, or afternoon, whenever we met them, and more especially to do so with those people we knew well. Moreover, we were told we would be astonished by the immediate and kind responses, besides the cheerful reactions, from those people we greeted, so I decided to give it a try. As far as reactions were concerned, the teacher was absolutely correct, as the response was really amazing: people beamed and were much friendlier than before. So I resolved to develop this new-found tactic, albeit, as it turned out, it would prove to my serious detriment.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.