At Marron

I wasn't born until 1950 so this story was told to me by my mother and was primarily about herself and my older sister both of whom are now deceased.
They lived in a cottage outside the village, where my sister spent her early years having been born in 1943.
The area around was predominantly farm land and prisoner of war labour was used to lay drains.
It would appear that the prisoners were a mixture of Italian and German.
Each day they would arrive by truck from the camp accompanied by their guard, a local man called Freddie Rayson.My parents had been told that fraternisation was strictly forbidden between the prisoners and members of the public.
The prisoners had an Italian cook called Guido who came to the back of the cottage regularly to collect water to make tea, and for cooking.Whilst he was waiting for the container to be filled my mum would often give him a few chips to eat if that was what she was cooking.
One day when the truck arrived my sister,Jennifer, who was only a toddler, ran around to the front of the cottage before my mum could stop her. When mum caught up with her she had been stopped by a tall blonde German. He lifted her up into his arms and looking at mum pointed to Jennifers eyes and said "beautiful blue".At that moment my mums heart went out to him as she thought that he may have had children of his own and had no idea what was happening to them or even if they were alive.The German had very little English so any form of conversation was out of the question. He carried her around to the back of the cottage and down a small bank to the river which ran alongside. My mum watched while he carefully removed Jennifers socks and little clogs and let her dabble her feet in the water.
People may wonder why Freddie the guard hadn't intervened in all this.The answer is that those men worshipped him because of his kindness to them and that there was a great deal of trust on both sides.
On very wet days when they had to stop work he would organise a concert with them in one of the farmers sheds.Guido once said to mum "Freddie my friend"
Over the years I have oten wondered what happened to Gudo and the German Soldier.

© Copyright of content contributed to this Archive rests with the author. Find out how you can use this.