The enemy was my old teacher

BritiSH tank officer douglas Sutherland camps overnight with his men in Germany, in the closing weeks of the war.

JOE, Wally and I backed into the trees and heaved a sigh of relief. A tot or two of the blessed rum and so to bed.

The following morning, as Briggsy reversed the tank back into business, there rose from under the lefthand track, with hands held above his head, as dishevelled, grimy and miserable a figure as anyone could imagine. His grey German uniform was scarcely recognisable under its coating of mud and oil.

As we stared in amazement at this apparition, he grimaced and pointed to a narrow slit trench in which he had been trapped under the tank track all night.

There was something about that gesture which rang the faintest of bells. I signalled to him to climb on to the turret. Sitting on top of the tank, we stared at each other in disbelief.

In those long-ago days of the 1930s, when God was in his heaven and all was well with the world, my father decreed that my brother and I should have a German tutor. His name was Willie Schiller. Now the same Willie Schiller was facing me.

There was nothing much either of us could do about it. He may have said ‘Gott in Himmel,’ (God in heaven) but I can’t remember. We had a rum or two and smoked a cigarette.

After the war I was telling my mother about this affair. ‘Nonsense,’ she said firmly. ‘It could not have been him. You must have been drunk.’

‘I was not drunk,’ I responded indignantly. ‘Why do you say it could not have been Willie?’

‘Because,’ she said firmly, ‘Willie was always so

perfectly turned out.’

writer, James Salter, calls a ‘feeling of approval in life’.

But you also sense that something, somewhere is wrong. There are occasional shadows in the City of Light.