[The author is writing in regards to her German grandfather who fought in the First World War.]

My grandfather’s hurriedly written postcards pictured the French countryside and shot-up villages. They always started with “I am still well” – as if he expected disaster to strike at any moment. Once he told my grandmother that he had just come back from the funeral of a comrade who had succumbed to his wounds, and though he does not come out and say it, the matter-of-fact words fail to hide a sense of tremendous sadness.

On birthdays he wrote to his children that he would rather be with them and reminded them to be good and obey their mother. Two years after the war started, and with two more to go, he did not mention a hoped-for victory, nationalistic sentiments, heroism, or a soldier’s honor, just a longing to have it all done with so they could get on with their lives.

Source:

Hunt, Irmgard A. “Roots of Discontent.” On Hitler’s Mountain: Overcoming the Legacy of a Nazi Childhood. New York: Harper Collins Publishers, 2005. 14. Print.