He was my Hero. I use to admire for hours his picture on the mantle of the fire place. Wearing the uniform of a World War One French Dragoon. The superb shiny helmet with the horse tail, the chest armor, the saber, the tight calf skin riding britches, the massive riding boots. The manly moustache and the defying posture where in this child’s mind what a hero was all about! He used to retell story of charges on horseback, the fierce horse trained to attack the horse of the German Black Hulans. Those were the stuff that fascinated this little boy. There was this patch in his garden, defended by a chestnut fence, with a gate to be never opened by other than him. Inside was a very dangerous territory that had not been cleared yet. You see, departing Nazi, he said, had mined and booby trapped the place and only He could find his way in this hellish place. I used to have nightmare, wake up in sweat afraid that my Hero had been tricked by the evil mines and that I would never see him again. No force of heaven or hell could have convinced me to open that gate and brave the evil danger of the place. It is only later; much later that I found out that my Hero, my grandfather was only trying to keep my sorry ass out of his favorite raspberry bushes!
Posted on: Mon, 02 Sep 2013 01:04:34 +0000
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