Deeply fascinating...

Came back last night from that birthday party in Skanderborg, Jutland and I have to say it was sooooo very Danish (a ridiculous amount of food... I don't need to eat until Christmas!) and all the obligatory (but fun!) speeches were there.

It's a fantastically beautiful area and we were very lucky with the good weather we had. (very important in Denmark: being lucky with the right weather!)

(the Skanderborg lakes, not a ripple on the water...)

However, even though I unfortunately didn't meet my grandcousin again (it has been 15 years already!) I ended up talking the whole day with a fascinating man from a small island in the south of Denmark. He started telling me things I don't think even his wife knows about, despite their 51 years of marriage!

He started telling me about the Battle of The Marne, where his father had been fighting as a German soldier (that Danish island was German until 1920, which explains his funny accent) in World War 1, and had actually survived from beginning to end... including being in an English POW labour camp from 1918 to 1919.

He told me about an attack during that battle... 14.000 Germans attacked, in the same way all attacks went back then: everyone being slaughtered in no time.

Only 7 soldiers made it back out of the 14.000 (!!) and his father, a sergeant of some sort, was one of them...

Arriving back at the command HQ - bloody, dirty, tired, exhausted and completely shattered - this German soldier went to report to his superiors.
He then walks right into some sort of orgy of alcohol and whores, and as his commanding officer looks at him in that state - coming straight from the trenches, the officer says:

"We had an encounter with death, but it sure was fun!"

At that very moment he decides he will never participate in those mindless, senseless battles anymore... and somehow manages to stay alive during the next 4 years, until he gets captured by the English and is sent off to a labour camp in England.

In the meantime his wife at home on the island of Als, doesn't know whether he is alive or dead, when hearing about all the insane destruction of human life that is going on.
She then meets a Russian POW that was sent with a whole group to the then German island for some labour (and as far away as possible from the frontlines). So when our German soldier returns home after the war, he finds his wife and daughter gone. (I can hardly begin to imagine the pain and suffering of that generation, and the horrors of war they had to go through).

Fortunately he manages to regain custody over his daugther again and as he finds a new wife the islanders have to decide whether they want to be Danish or remain German.

That was all that was to it, just signing their names on a piece of paper! That was that! (quite a difference from the xenophobic regulations and rules of today's Denmark, huh?)

The story from World War 1 was one of the many this man told me: he also told me about his time in Paris, when he went on a whim in the early fifties to learn French, and experience French women... ehhh, I mean 'culture'. Some stuff here definitely is not known to his wife... ;)

While he was telling me all this (we spoke until 2 am... and were the last ones to be kicked out!) his WW1 story reminded me immensely of a fantastic book I have read some years ago, which shook me to my very core. It's the book Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks. This book basically deals about the same facts (seen from the perspective of an Englishman).
It's basically the same story about someone trying to survive the insanity of the war, through the love for his close ones. All he wants is to survive, very simple...
That book was so powerful to me, that while reading I had to lay down the book at times, for the strong emotions it evoked...

I am definitely going back to the book now, after hearing this real story. The resemblance was uncanny!

Thanks Rudolph, for sharing these stories with me!! It inspired me once again, and we had a great evening talking about 'life in general' and of all the beauties we have met in life... ;)