This story was told to me by my mother many years after my father had died and it helped me to understand what sort of a man he was.
During WW11 my father was in the Wehrmacht (German Army) and one day the hill he was on was being assaulted by some American troops. The commanding officer ordered his troops to shoot the Americans as they came up the hill but my dad figured this was no more than outright murder so he refused. (He was a telegraph operator and only carried a sidearm... plus he had never shot anyone in his life.)
Dad could have been shot on the spot for this but instead, his commander decided to send him on a suicide mission the next day and let that take care of the problem.
After he was out of sight of his unit he started hiding behind every tree and in every ditch until he made his was to the edge of one of the enemy units which happened to be a Canadian company.
He immediately surrendered!
After a year in a POW camp, dad spent the rest of the war as a driver and translator for one of the officers and when the war was over he immediately applied to emigrate to North America since Germany was in ruins.
The waiting list for the States was too long so he put down our name for Canada and then got us on one of the first immigrant ships coming over here.
On a side note: He originally wanted to go to the States because he had an uncle in Iowa, but since we went to Canada that was no longer possible.
All in all, it's a good thing we did go to Canada because if we had ended up being American, I would have been a Canadian by about 1969 anyway! (Vietnam)
The way I see it!
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