A SILKEN INTERLUDE Part I

A SILKEN INTERLUDE
( Part I )

"My Zeide fought in the war and won a hundred meddles" read the proud message pinned to the corkboard at my grandson's kindergarten class. Grandsons are very special, with unlimited licence in regard to facts and spelling. His cousin, my grand-nephew, a little older, wanted more specific details about my war experiences - "were you captured - did you escape?' and was not satisfied with my answer.
"What do you mean, yes and no?" he said. And at his probing, I began to remember-
It was embarrassing for them and for us. We were finishing off the duckboards to the small Bailey bridge; the rest of the unit had pulled back and five minutes more would have seen the four of us in our truck with the job completed - the Wehrmacht patrol, an armoured scout car and a six-wheeled truck, swirled around us in seconds, and we were in the bag. The sergeant's English was fluent, but heavily accented; he motioned the three sappers into the six-wheeler, and pushed me into the rear seat in the scout car. It took them only minutes to strip and disable our vehicle before we roared off northwards.
The sergeant sat next to the driver, half-turned towards me, his pistol carelessly waving in my direction while he questioned me on our unit, our strength, our armour. Despite my routine name-number-and- rank answers he persisted in firing questions at me. Eventually, he gave up, but still sat half-turned, covering me with his pistol. We were traveling quite fast, swerving to avoid the many potholes and washaways in the road.