“Once, in front of an assembled group, he asked a tank grenadier, who had only been with us three days, if he had been able to ‘integrate’ himself yet. The young soldier, who came from Upper Silesia, and spoke German in a rather humorous and twisted form, looked at the Old Man in a rather quizzical manner, but then, seemingly having understood, answered, ‘I don’t know yet, Herr Oberleitnand!’ We could see that the Old Man had not expected this answer. He therefore asked: ‘Why not? You’ve been here with us for three days!’ ‘Jawoll, Herr Oberleitnand!’ answered the man. ‘But I only got my first black crap tablet two hours ago!’ The entire group just howled with laughter! The soldier thought the Old Man had asked him if the charcoal tablets had helped his diarrhoea. The Old Man laughed with us of course, but he didn’t realise that we were laughing over the delightfully down-to-earth answer to the posh way the question was put to him. The Old Man had of course only wanted to know if the soldier had found himself at ease in our group.”