He couldn’t understand what I wanted.
Heroes Remember
We’d gone over the top. We’d gone over the top, I think, in 19…
just about the finish of the war in 1918. And we got over the top
and I was assigned. I was assigned by my corporal in charge of
my section. I was assigned to go along the trench and check
all the dugouts eh, check all the dugouts. And, of course,
we took mills bombs with us. And we’d come to these dugouts
and these hollow… and then, of course, we threw a bomb down
and then went on to the next one. But there is quite a little
episode there that comes into it. And that is, after I got to
the end of that particular part of the trench where the dugouts
were, and I went up on top onto what would be ‘No Man’s Land’
prior to that, it wasn’t of course. The Germans had gone back.
And I saw this man coming across the field, a German, and I went
across to meet him. I went across to meet him. And the thing that
struck my head was, well, I wanted a souvenir. This is funny.
I said I wanted a souvenir but I couldn’t make him understand
what I wanted. He talked about his watch. I said, “I don’t want
no watch.” Then his ring. “No, I don’t want any ring.
I want a souvenir. What have you got that I can have?”
And finally I went… I took that man back into the line again
with me, just the one man. I took him back into the line with me.
He gave me a frank, not a frank, but a German mark, German mark.
And my mother had that right for years after. You’ve got to
give me…that’s all I could get for a souvenir was a German mark.
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