Old correspondence touches on modern times

[“The secret of the lightning Nazi advances, according to the Greeks, is that every moment spared from strafing is used in diligent, continuous eating. It took some time for the Greeks to understand that the first thing the German army does after bombing a city is to eat everything in it.” pg. 62, Weller’s War]

My mind is back in 1941 and I’m forming the impression that there is much to be learned there.

Recently, after sending off my latest writing project to the print shop (a compilation of my father’s naval memoirs from WW2 entitled “Dad, Well Done”) I found time to take a mental break and browse shelves at a local bookstore with a gift card and hot cuppa dark roast in hand.

Trust me. As I thumbed new books at full and bargain prices (admittedly, mostly at bargain prices!) the same thought often crossed my mind. Life doesn’t get much better than this.

Weller’s War caught my eye. I noticed beautiful cover art work in sepia tones, a photo of keys on an old typewriter, and the words ‘a legendary foreign correspondent’s saga of World War II on five continents.’ With the sound of my own modern keyboard still in my ears and the thought that I’d just finished typing my father’s own notes about WWII, I reached for the book.

Hefty. 630 pages. $9.99. Mine.

Only after I got it home did I read the flyleaf and realize the person who had compiled George Weller’s war correspondence was his son, Anthony, thus causing my “very good choice” to become “the best choice I’ve made in a long time.”


["Merchant mariners, north of Lake Superior, circa 1945": GH]

I wasn’t many pages into it before a familiar feeling swept over me, i.e., an appreciation of living in modern times and not having to eat short rations, sleep on wet limestone floors or cover my ears at the sound of nighttime bombings while holed up in a cave - or cattle corral - on Sicily, as, according to his memoirs, my father had done, or rush from war front to war front to observe and report the atrocities and degradations of war, as Weller had done.

Last night I read the following from Weller’s article ‘Greeks Hungry as Nazi Army Grabs the Food’, Athens, Greece - July 26, 1941:

In any occupied town it is a common occurrence to see a German blitz straight down a menu consuming double orders throughout and tripling anything really toothsome. Such decathlon eating records would be merely a pleasantly human counterweight to Nazi asceticism if the factory girls in Athens were not fainting repeatedly at work for lack of sufficient nourishment. (Pg. 62)

I pictured the scene. Triple orders for the invaders. Insufficient rations for the invaded. “The record of sixteen chocolate cakes consumed at a single sitting” by a German sergeant-major at Zonars, the largest pastry eatery in Athens. Ragged Greek officers - “having marched for three weeks from Albania eating grass” - begging at the back door.

I concluded the 1941 eating records were startling, and the contrast between haves and have nots was as well.

I read another paragraph and, surprisingly, thought of modern times:

Every restaurant from Alexandropolis to Calamata has its own incredible German eating records. Flocas, a famous meeting place in Salonika - the city whose only flour mill was burned down the night before the Nazis entered - is still talking about five Germans who demanded five orders of bacon and eggs with three eggs each. At the time only smuggled eggs were obtainable, at 12 cents each, about five times the normal price. When the Germans finished the first order they demanded another. After that they commanded a third, still with three eggs on each plate. Before invariable successions of rounds of sundaes they insisted on having two large orders of ham apiece.

As far as I can recount, I’ve had fewer than five three-egg breakfasts in my lifetime, and most of those I ate after completing a long training run in preparation for a marathon. Nowadays, a two-egg breakfast makes me feel stuffed. The two slices of toast on the side are plenty, with PB and J (or orange marmalade) if available. And it’s usually available.

As I continue to read Weller’s War, I’ll continue to enjoy it for what it is, i.e., 70-year old war correspondence.

However, I’m sure - though I’m not 100 per cent sure why - many of the articles will spur thoughts about modern times to rise to the surface as well.

Is it something I ate?

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