Childrens wartime games.

Tom Holloway (xuegx@CSV.WARWICK.AC.UK)
Sun, 17 Mar 1996 12:30:39 +0000 

Tom mentioned his perspectives as a child, playing with toy
soldiers, simulating dogfights.  And he asked us what we
recall.

In Berlin we played much as you did, Tom.  Except our spread-arm
messerschmidts shot at spitfires, of course.

I was fortunate to have a lot of toys, lots of them military-type,
but not all.  I had a steel-mold and we cast soldiers out of
lead or tin.  And we had fun painting them.  We exchanged soldiers.
One wounded soldier with a bleeding head wrapper for one on his
knees tossing a handgrenade.  I had german and british soldiers.
My british soldiers never won my battles.

You mentioned how normal we all took the sights and sounds of
war, and so it was with us as well.  I watched many a times the
many bombers as they drew their white contrails across the sky
and saw the small feathery contrails that curved at the edges of
that carpet.  These were the german fighters tryi ng to nibble
away at the flight of bombers.  Every now and then there were
planes coming down with smoke trailing behind them, sometimes none.
Often they were so high we thought nothing about the dangers
they posed, particularly the bullets from the guns of the
german planes and the british - who usually had the daylight
bombing tasks.

Once I was given a soldier uniform kit.  A helmet and a cardboard
front of a uniform covered in the same material and with the same
insignia, and I had a wooden dagger and a belt to go with it.
I recall saluting a soldier once and he saluted back, and I thought
that I had just become a man to be taken serious.

In 1943, when I was ten, we finally were taken serious by the
grownups in the hitleryouth and we were given "assignments" to
go out after air attacks (not raids, but attacks) and find duds.
The big ones we reported.  But the incindiary bombs we picked
up.  We had up to six of these stickbombs under each arm at
times.  They were hard to carry.  They were not so heavy, but
they had cast-iron on one end to make sure they impacted as
planned, and that made them hard to carry.  They slipped out
and fell on the pavement at times.  But of course the velocity
of the fall was not enough to set them off.  That was done
by purpose lateron.  The "big guys" slammed these ends on
the stone and they would start spewing sparks and flames.
Our job was to use paperbags filled with sand to put them out.
I think some burocrat came up with that idea who had never seen
a flame other than from his cigar lighter.  A sand filled
bag held over the stickbomb just does not burn easy at the
bottom so that the sand could flow out.  I dont recall ever
being able to hold a roughly one-gallon volume of sand at
armslength long enough for the bottom to scorch.  It was too
much of a weight for me and I flunked the tests.

Dangerous?  not if you asked us then.  That was nothing,
just interesting.

There is some virtue of having been old enough to remember the war
and the impressions that go along with it, and to be young enough
to not really comprehend its horror.

Well, my soldier friend, we were no different at all.  But
at that time, you would have been my enemy because that was
what you were supposed to be, and after all, you dropped the
bombs on us.  That germany had done anything to deserve being
bombed and fought, that was already a matter of geopolitics
and exceeded the priorities of playoing boys.

Best to you
Eberhard
The Berlin schoolboy.
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