What do you miss and not miss?

[Storm]

Thank you so much!

[kapitanprien]

Sure thing!

[Laurasia]

Prien......~hugs~ You all know how mushy I can be. LOL! Thank you for making those suggestions to SSKarma. I may have to look into some Pine flower myself.

As for my wages as Hans, I have no idea. I haven't recalled such things. I do know that my unit & I received bonuses from time to time & "little extras" for our work....not to mention some leeway with items from Kanada.

Anna was Austrian by birth though, so her family wasn't so affected by the hideous nosedive that our German economy took before the war. Her family definitely had more money than I did. LOL!

Sincerely,
Laurasia

[kapitanprien]

Re Laurasia: You're Welcome

If you, or anyone else is interested - there is a 'remedy questionnaire' that some may find helpful in choosing FES essences:

You can download this PDF file to keep which is handy -

www.anandaapothecary.com/articles/Choosing_Flower_Essences.pdf

Regarding Anna and Austria - yes I don't really ever recall reading how Austria was affected during the 20's and early 30's.

[privatetucker]

Well like they say 'hindsight is 20/20' and you got to forgive yourself. Don't beat yourself up over something that - in one sense - you didn't know you would get caught up in. It's not worth it and it doesn't really make much sense to do so. If you understand what I'm saying.

Absolutely. So, so much. Sums it up better than I ever could.

[gumby]

I miss Danny, my husband, American officer, assigned to Wiesbaden Army Base 1950. I don't know where he has gone and how he has lived without me. I also miss my BDM girls, some of them killed during the assault on our city. Where are my girls, where?

[sarque]

I miss my friends, so much. I want to know who they have become now, and if I would even recognize them. I miss flying, and I miss not being afraid of flying. When I dream about flying, I still have that feeling of love, but when I get on a plane now, I'm terrified.

I don't miss the war itself, but I do miss many elements of it. I don't miss my life after the war, dealing with my injury and feeling somehow less than myself.

[Storm]

Sarque, I totally understand about missing flying. My probable PL served at times in the Luftwaffe too and he loved flying with an absolute passion, until he was grounded by the Fuhrer. I carried my love of flying over into this life and learned to fly, but I gave it up when I had kids as the risks and insurance were too much. I do worry about commercial flying, simply because terrorists have decided to turn civil aircraft into weapons of mass destruction. I never felt the same after the Pan Am bombing and was glad I ceased training to become a commercial pilot. I think the security is pretty good now with commercial flying, but I still get jittery and prefer to travel by rail and sea for any distance.

[munchenruth]

I miss the opportunity to grow old and see my son grow up and him really knowing who I was then.

I miss the taste of my mother's onion kugel and the smell of the challah at the bakery every Friday.

I miss waking up every morning to the sound of my husband praying.

I miss the tight community provided by the shul and the eruv.

I miss being allowed (and expected) to cover my hair after I was married.

I miss how funny my husband looked when I caught him washing his beard with my shampoo, his payos stuck to his cheeks because of them being wet.

I don't miss losing sleep every Oktoberfest due the drunks singing in the night.

I don't miss the hunger that came with being Jewish and then the starvation in the camps.

I don't miss the nights I went to bed alone.

I don't miss having that horrible yellow star on every single stitch of my clothing and having to sew them on. Such cheap fabric that my fingers bled from my needle slipping through the material.

[rednight94]

I miss, like the above, the opportunity to have grown old. To have gotten married and have children. I feel like a chunk of me is missing. Like I was left out of something great. I see my grandparent's generation and think that I should be with them, and it makes me a bit thoughtful about the entire situation. I'll pretend sometimes like I did live and think about how it would be to be old. I think about the family I missed out on. Who would I have married? Where would I have lived? What would my children have been like?
It's interesting to think of all our ruined lives, and how quite a few of us would be in very different places right now if it weren't for one man's actions...
I don't have any memories of my last life, I'm devoid of them. I knew I had been there, but my suspicions were not confirmed until my reading with msmir. I wish I could remember though... So, unfortunately, I have no way of remembering things to miss and not miss.

[brooklynfan]

What I miss

- My life before the war. The shop I apprenticed at, and the girl I was stupid head over heels in love with
- My Kameraden, Who died far before their time
- Doing 'the stupid things' that soldiers have a tendency to do when they have too much time on their hands
- The pride that I had in the beginning of the war. The pride of having brought Germany back from her imposed destruction. The unquestionable love of country and patriotism that all young men who have never seen war (or been completely hoodwinked by their government) feel.
- My horse, Mädchen. Non cavalry people do not understand the connection between a reiter and his horse.
- Being one of those drunken idiots serenading in the streets at Oktoberfest. Actually, I just miss pretty much all of Oktoberfest.

Things I dont miss
- The war. The sights, the sounds, the smells. Freezing out in the ostfront, having to deal with the Bolsheviks.

- Russia. Especially the three seasons of Russia- Mud, Frozen Mud, and dust.

- Anything having to do with the camps. Being drunk as much as humanly possible, chainsmoking whatever tobacco I could find (even those dirty Bolshevik Cigarettes) because it cut the smells out in the Krema, but could never completely make it disappear. The "Hungarian Aktion"

- "Snow" Both kinds.

- Worrying about home and family. Hearing the news stories about my hometown being bombed and wondering if those I loved were ok.

[munchenruth]

I tend to survive conversations better when the others involved are much older than me, so long as they are lucid. Those in the "Greatest Generation" and the one directly after are my prime conversationalists. Shows some things never change. That, and my life prior to the WWII life, practically no one is left. One day, that will be the case for Rut. It will be another sad day.

[Miss Bothmann]

What I don't miss is the air raids. I live near the airport so I hear planes flying overhead constantly and it's always unnerving, I expect to hear sirens at any moment.

I hear you there! The air raids were simply awful. I cannot even imagine living near an airprt. My old house was 6 miles away from one, and that even tended to be too close at times (like when the planes flew too close over my house..*sigh*)

[brotkrume]

We live near a very active railway line. The wife has to wear earplugs most nights.

[brotkrume]

One of the things I miss the most:

I am unsure which holiday it would be, but everyone, and I mean EVERYONE, ordered these big huge pretzels--typically unsalted. When this holiday came around, Vatti would bake a few extra and hide them in the backs of the delivery trucks. When we made our rounds, which would take us to the ports on this trip (I really enjoyed going to Bremen and seeing the big ships), we would camp in the back of the trucks for the night.

I remember Vatti would pull out the pretzels, a jar of brown grainy mustard, and a small container of honey. He would buy or trade for butter on the journey. We (Vatti, myself, and the other two men who traveled in the second truck--extra deliveries for the holiday) would pull out our pocket knives and dug in after the pretzels were warmed on the engine block on a piece of metal.

The honey was mixed with the butter. I was too young to appreciate the mustard (maybe 5 or so as the war was still on). I remember the sweet stickiness in my mouth and butter running down my chin and getting all over my hosen. The other men would laugh at my 'butter beard'. The smell of the mustard and the honey butter on the hot pretzels would stay in the air in the trucks most of the night. Breakfast would be the same, if there was any left.

Mutti HATED the stains I came home with. What can you do with a boy who is ALL boy?