My family went to my grandparents house to get something from some footlockers my father put there when he came home from Europe after WWII. As a very young kid I had no idea what this meant.
I was sitting on the kitchen table (I was four, maybe five years old) and in he comes back in wearing an M35 Normandy camouflage helmet and carrying a Mauser K98 with the bayonet still attached. Scared the hell out of me! We would regularly watch B&W war movies, so I instantly knew what it was!
Over the next few years more stuff came out, to be used as toys when all the neighborhood boys played soldier. Fortunately I was careful to keep it all together, sometime risking fights!
A War Merit Cross went to kindergarden with me for show and tell, and a "big kid" attempted to strong arm it away from me when the teacher wasn't looking. Since I couldn't win this battle straight up, I grabbed a small chair and used it to convince him to let go. Let us say several valuable lessons were learned that day....
I was doomed....
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