Snapshot: Grandpa’s German friend from the war
My late grandfather, Leonard Macdonald Baldwin, was a stretcher-bearer in the first world war and was awarded the Military Medal for having worked “for 26 hours with unfailing energy although often subject to heavy machine-gun and shellfire … It was entirely due to their devotion to duty that all casualties were cleared.”
He always kept a diary and I have all his pocket ones from the war. A key event of his life turned out to be a meeting that just gets a one-line reference on 19 February 1917: “Took Robert Liebig away.”
This excerpt from my grandfather’s memoir (written in his 80s for private circulation) describes his rescue of this German soldier on the battlefield:
“Our attention was drawn by a young German soldier lying in a ‘cubbyhole’. He was one of those who had survived our attack, but he had three machine-gun wounds. The cold weather had congealed the blood, otherwise he might have bled to death. He told us he was a student, aged 21, and that he had not received any attention for two days. We carried him away under shellfire and my fellow stretcher-bearers suggested ‘finishing him off’ for our own safety’s sake. I appealed against this on the grounds of the humanity a PoW was entitled to.
“He could speak French and English and told me later, in his first letter after 19 years, that he didn’t feel very comfortable listening to the proposed ‘finishing off’. He also said he was glad we refrained from doing so as he had carried one of our men to safety a few days previously …
“During a halt to the advanced dressing station, Robert asked for my home address and promised to send me a souvenir after the war. This request I had to refuse as finding my address on a German may have implicated me in some way. However, I wrote his (in Bremen) in the back of my small pocket diary. I wrote to him there in 1936 and received a reply about a month later from Berlin, where he had gone to live. He thought we ought to meet, and this we did in August 1937.”
This photo is of their first meeting off the battlefield. Apparently, this was reported in a Berlin newspaper because someone mistakenly thought my grandfather, Mr Baldwin, was the then prime minister, Stanley Baldwin!
Bob came to England many times, and my grandfather often stayed with him in Germany. They spoke on the phone every year on 19 February, “their” day. They remained in contact for the rest of their lives, both dying in their 90s.
Gillian Baldwin
Playlist: Outrageousness put iron in the soul
Farewell Aunty Jack by Grahame Bond and Rory O’Donoghue from The Aunty Jack Show in the early 1970s
“Farewell, Aunty Jack / We know you’ll be back / Though you’re 10-feet tall you don’t scare us at all”
I was six when I first heard this eccentric Australian song. My brother and I used to mime to it and we particularly adored the line, “So remember, you’d better tune in next week to the show ’cause if you don’t, I’ll come round to your house and I’ll rip ya bloody arms off!” We were shocked and thrilled by how outrageous he was.
We were living in a cold ex-convent in rural Devon with our Australian mum, and our only connection to her side of the family were infrequent phone calls with a five-second delay, letters, parcels containing thermals, and the odd telegram (when it was serious and couldn’t wait). We couldn’t have been further away.
Mum was treated with suspicion, her accent mimicked, her olive skin and bohemian headscarves mocked. We were magnets for the rough boys who came door to door selling their wares, kittens and crochet blankets mainly, and because my dad was rarely there – working in London during the week, their marriage already in tatters – my mum was vulnerable.
But whenever we put on this single (which must have been sent to us from my mum’s sisters, who lived in Sydney), it put iron in the soul. It was mad, loud, brash and funny. I can see us now, revving up our imaginary bikes in the draughty sitting room, singing our heads off to “though you’re 10-feet tall, you don’t scare us at all!” and feeling invincible, ready to take on the world. And it brought my mum’s family closer to us. We had Australia on our side.
Sophie James
We love to eat: Kazu’s mother’s morning toast
Ingredients
Bread, to toast
Sesame paste / tahini, black or white
Good-quality honey (for example acacia or chestnut)
This is a simple recipe for breakfast. Toast a slice of bread. Spread a layer of black or white sesame paste on the toast. Spread a small teaspoon of good-quality honey on top. Mix the two together a little bit on the toast.
Kazu’s mother was a tiny old Japanese lady. Together with her son, Kazu, and her daughter-in-law, Tsutsumi, they lived in a designer house made of glass and wood, in the middle of a bamboo forest, near Osaka.
It was May 2002. My husband and I were touring the world for a year and we stayed at Kazu’s for 10 days. Kazu’s mother was in her 80s then. Every morning we ate breakfast looking on to the bamboo forest. I remember bathing in imported luxury. We did not have rice porridge, miso soup or pickled vegetables. Instead, it was Lenôtre wholemeal bread, Fauchon chocolate spread. Japan was rich for sure.
Kazu’s mother was something of a glutton, like a child. I remember Tsutsumi gently telling her off when she poured a quarter of the jar of gourmet chocolate paste into her yoghurt. It was she who showed us how she spread her toast with Japanese tahini (neri goma) and honey. It was a culinary revelation.
Kazu’s mother died a few years ago. I never knew her name. But since our visit, we have always had tahini and honey on our breakfast table. And we very often think of the tiny Japanese lady with the shiny eyes.
Marie-Pierre Crozet
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