They had a son in the flyers’ corps, of whom they were very proud. Sometimes when the son was home on leave, all four of us would go downstairs to the pub and sit there in the thick, steamy atmosphere until dawn, drinking beers and whiskeys and vodkas and “Eiercognac” and a peculiar form of dynamite called “Himbiergeist,” That means, roughly, spirit of raspberries, and oh, my golly! We were sitting in that small pub the night the German army marched into Austria.
