Grandpa often told me about the war. He knew that I found exciting stories. He spoke as if he had been present at every major battle. Gently at first, but a little later he got into it. Waving his arms and pointing to where the Germans were sitting. Then he pointed at an imaginary gun and shouted at the top of his lungs: “BATS! BATS!” He sat down again, a little out of breath. “Yes man,” he would say.
On a warm afternoon in the summer, grandpa liked to sit on a folding chair in his shed. His DAF was also parked there. He then positioned the chair exactly so that he was just sitting in the shade, but a little bit into the wind. He would chew some chewing tobacco and look ahead. On such a very hot day I once cycled to grandpa’s. He looked exactly as I hoped. He told me to get one of those folding chairs too. And there we sat. It was too hot to do anything, he said. I agreed with that. I was allowed to grab an ice cream from the large freezer in the other shed. Grandpa didn’t want ice cream. “I really hate cold water.”
He started to tell. That he had gone to a café in Germany that week. After a few drinks he went outside again to get his bike. But the bike was gone. So he goes back inside. And just shout at those Germans: “They pushed my bicycle away, my bicycle!” The Germans did not understand him. He pretended with his hands as if he were holding a steering wheel and made pedaling movements. Had a German said: “Oh well, ihr Fahrrad!” Then Grandpa had said: “No, not my wheel, my whole bike!”
He laughs. I laugh. And then it was quiet again. A moment later I couldn’t contain myself. I just had to ask. Why did he often go for a drink in Germany? He hated the Germans so much, didn’t he? He told me that they were the best people in the world, but that after the First World War, blinded by poverty and a desire for revenge, they had fallen to the forces of pure evil. He shouted: “Adolf Hitler!” He spit his proempie tobacco into a flower pot and said: “Yes man.”