A Gift of Chocolate-A Glimpse of Freedom

Happy Veteran’s Day
kudos to so many in my family who served….
thanks Dad, without you, none of it would be possible

A gift of chocolate, a glimpse of freedom, and an introduction to America

Somewhere, somehow, somebody must have kicked you around some….
Who knows, maybe you were kidnapped, tied up and taken away for ransom….
It don’t really matter to me,
Everybody’s got to fight to be free,
You don’t have to live like a refugee,
You know…you don’t have to live like a refugee
Tom Petty

    My mother’s first encounter with an American was in war-ravaged Europe in 1946. Here she was; a thin, hungry kid in Germany as a refugee, a Displaced Person (DP) from Eastern Europe. She was hungry and malnourished; she had known nothing but war all her life.

    She lived in a small village in Germany that was spared the heavy bombing of the industrial cities. Her family was living in rooms given up by the resentful Native German families. One day a small squad of American soldiers came by that small village. She and many of the children of the town came running to the town square to see the strangers in their green uniforms. One of them was carefully giving a square of chocolate to each child, breaking it from one of several bars of chocolate he had in his hands.

    He broke a square off and held it out to her, smiling as he did so. She hungrily and happily took it from his hand, and smiled back, speaking in a proper manner “Dankeshon”, thanking him for the gift of the rare chocolate. He continued breaking off pieces of chocolate, making sure each child got only one square, so there would be enough for all.

  Then the soldiers finished their break, and headed off in their jeeps and trucks to parts unknown.
 

   This first meeting with an American seems to me an emblem of our national character. The peace loving, generous and thoughtful Americans, who sometimes are forced to fight when really they would rather not have to. We as a nation are not unfamiliar with war, but we do not look forward to it in a general way. And we would rather enter a battle firmly, decisively and with proper timing and sufficient strength so as to finish the hostilities quickly and avoid a protracted war. Yet when the shells stop ejecting, and the lead is no longer flying we are so happy to spread our largess around, to help the poor afflicted ones left in the wake of the battles. The innocent ones, the young, the non-combatants are generally treated by Americans with compassion, and largess. We feel sorry for the poor people taken along by despotic or maniacal leaders, the ones who’s countries economies and National Character were lead astray by evil ones. So our country as a whole generally helps out to one degree or another. And the people of the USA are usually quick to send aid through individual charities.

    This faceless American, the nameless soldier who dropped that piece of chocolate into my mothers hand that day gave her a lot more than chocolate, he gave her a glimpse of another land. A land where people got to eat chocolate, indeed they had so much that they could even give some to people they did not even know. He opened the curtain displaying for her a place, indeed an idea of freedom and plenty. A concept unknown in the world centuries before, and a new concept to her from the years of war and poverty. This concept grew in her through the years. The education, the opening of the Fortress Europe to American concepts and ideas matured the concept, and later when an adult the marriage to my father, an American soldier himself brought her to these balmy shores. The land that enshrines the concept of immigration in one of the best-known statues in the world. “Give me your poor, your huddled, your teeming masses ready to break free.” She was one of the poor teeming huddled masses, and she made it to this country and became an American, and she helped raise some American children. 

John’s Mom and Grandmother, Germany, 1946

The song lyrics below are from an Elton John song,
they speak to me because of my time on the Iron Curtain in the 70′s.
I worked the border areas of West Germany…..I’d look across that wide ‘No-Man’s Land’
watching the Eastern soldiers smoke their cigarettes in their towers 
and looking back at me through their scopes…
Often we’d wave to one another….
soldiers, away from home…
each defending from the other….
yet each of us realizing we are people….
those waves are something I’ll never forget

Hey Nikita is it cold
In your little corner of the world
You could roll around the globe
And never find a warmer soul to know

Oh I saw you by the wall
Ten of your tin soldiers in a row
With eyes that looked like ice on fire
The human heart a captive in the snow

Oh Nikita You will never know anything about my home
I’ll never know how good it feels to hold you
Nikita I need you so
Oh Nikita is the other side of any given line in time
Counting ten tin soldiers in a row
Oh no, Nikita you’ll never know

Do you ever dream of me
Do you ever see the letters that I write
When you look up through the wire
Nikita do you count the stars at night

And if there comes a time
Guns and gates no longer hold you in
And if you’re free to make a choice
Just look towards the west and find a friend

   We are all people, failed, fallen. We have not risen to the heights we can…. perhaps someday we will.