My story
I was born on a cold winter’s day in the middle of the second world war in a small village in Luxemburg. I was born at home and it was a difficult birth as I refused for a long time to come into this crazy world and it almost cost my mother her life. At the time she was labouring her brother was conscripted. In this way my new uncle was recruited under coercion and posted to the Russian front by the German army. If he had not complied with the order and gone into hiding the whole family would have suffered for it and would have been displaced. My uncle returned home without his left hand but with a lot of courage to face life. With a great deal of optimism he managed to master his later life but never really spoke about these horrible years. He was always my favourite uncle Emil. Unfortunately, he died when he was just 48 years old. I grew up in this small, remote village with no bus or train connections and very very few cars. The only thing we had was pure nature: meadows and fields, bushes and trees, cows, horses, pigs, geese, rabbits, dogs a number of cats and in summer many swallows. Just imagine this sleepy village with about 150 inhabitants, craftsmen, workmen, some civil servants and farmers with impressive homesteads and a number of helpers; male and female farm labourers, day labourers and a large herd of cattle. There were not many machines to help at that time so people had to use their muscular strength when working in the fields. Even the children had to help as a matter of course: droving the cows and bringing them home, gathering wood and briquettes, feeding the rabbits and helping with the work in the fields. It was great fun helping with the hay harvest. But it was strenuous. You sweated and got a dry throat. For this we got water mixed with vinegar to drink which quenched our thirst quite well. This nicest thing for us children was to be able to be enthroned up high on the hay cart and watch our little world from above. I absolutely loved the incomparable smell of fresh hay which accompanied me all through my childhood. Our school was placed in the village centre. It consisted of a corridor, a classroom above which there was a teacher’s flat and outside, round the corner the toilets. The incomparable smell which adhered to the village schools in those days I could sniff again by just remembering the scene. The smells of oiled, wooden floors, leather schoolbags and the sometimes dense smoke spouting from the great big black heater in the middle of the classroom mixed themselves with the village odours which varied depending on the direction of the wind and the season – the smell of freshly mown grass, hay, dunghill and manure (available all year round) or the sweet-sour swathes from the distillery nearby. Our playground was a place on the opposite side of the street where we played mostly dodgeball all together. We also used to like “ Fox you stole the goose” and similar games.In our school eight classes were taught. On the old wooden benches the boys sat on the right hand side and the girls on the left hand side – like at church. Our school mistress was a strict person with a perm, a hooked nose, a high-necked dress and a red neck when she got angry. She seemed to be timeless – was neither young nor old but she could not have been much older than 30. She had us well under control and out of respect for her we never dared to play too many stupid pranks. She taught us children a great deal. When I was there the number of pupils was 25. In previous years it had been even more. To box through 8 different syllabi you had to be competent and everybody had more than enough to do.I remember the reward for small children rather well. We called it “sugar finger”. On the top shelf of the cupboard there was a glass with fine granulated sugar. We wetted our finger well with saliva and then dived it deeply into the glass of granulated sugar. It tasted wonderful. Unfortunately they abolished it later and replaced it with a pink “good mark”. I have to admit that you could not compare the taste. I liked going to school and had no difficulties learning with the exception maybe of music. In those days music meant the teacher’s flute and your own voice. Before Christmas each one of us had to sing solo. I practised daily at home. For the test I sang devotedly “ a star rose in the eeeeast, three kings saaaaaw iiiiit”. I sang extremely loudly and, as I thought, rather well. The brutal words of my teacher soon brought me back to reality:” Sit down! Suzette will now sing us this song correctly.” And I had really tried hard and practised a lot. Suzette did not need to bother much because she could sing. In this way my teacher nipped my possible career as a singer in the bud. This lies back 55 years and all through my schooling musical education retained a bitter aftertaste and cost me quite an effort. In our village there were in those days a church, a church house onto which our school was built, a general store, 2 pubs, a cobbler, a dairy and the local fire brigade. The baker came twice a week and once a week the fat man with his green van selling fruit and vegetables. Nevertheless most of the inhabitants were self supporters. Everybody had a vegetable garden with different berry bushes and fruit trees. Especially in autumn everybody boiled down to preserve and conserve as much as possible. At Christmas time I exceptionally got oranges from the fat greengrocer. I found them terribly sour and did noy like them at all, even although my mother told me they were sooo healthy and contained sooo many vitamins. The hub of the village was the shop. The proprietor was “Noutemestatta”, as she was called by everyone, an elderly Miss Anna with asthma and other health problems and who often lay dying but miraculously convalesced and lived to a ripe old age. Her business was the hub of our village and was the meeting point for the female sex right in the middle of it. There you could buy your daily food and also stockings, underwear, aprons, buttons and thread and a restricted choice of linen, drapery and wool. People met there to exchange news, have a chat and sometimes gossip. There recipes were exchanged and well- meant advice given. In those days a lot of food was sold loosely, filled into a paper bag and weighed. I can still remember how the little bottle of Maggie was regularly refilled and also the mustard into the glass with the shiny lid.For us children the main point of attraction was the choice of sweets. Sometimes we were able to buy some of the delights: for one franc the soft, pink “bacon” or “Mokuch”(liquorice) that black piece of string rolled up to a wheel and from which you got a wonderfully black tongue which you then had to show.

Annemarie (Luxembourg)