It was a little carved dog -- a Scotty and stained to a nice deep brown look -- and apart from the time spent in doing it which I can appreciate it represented something very important to me. It connected me with my grandmother and through her to a German prisoner of war I never met.
I always remember going to my grandmother's house. She had a corner shop across the street from a steel works in Sheffield and in the nature of life back then the corner shop was both the supplier of cigarettes for the workers, sweets for the local kids and above all the pantry for the people who lived around the shop.
Back then people didn't have freezers or fridges and couldn't really afford to keep food stocked in the house. The nearest most came was a few shelves at the cellar-head and perhaps a cold table in the cellar, which was a slab of marble that kept meat cool. Most people, not having the money for a big shopping trip (and in any event, shops were local and there were no supermarkets) tended to go and buy what they needed when they needed it. I am not getting dewy-eyed here and extolling the virtues of the local shop and wishing we lived back then. My grandmother had to close at least one and a half days a week and she in turn could only stock so much food. She didn't have a fridge either so the food on her shelves had a limited shelf life.
The shop was convenient for a number of people but there were plenty of them: halfway up the street was another shop on an opposite corner and I used to wonder what made some people walk down the street to my grandmother's shop and not cross the road, which frankly had almost zero traffic.
Each to their own, as I say.
I was born after the second world war and I didn't live then in Sheffield, so visits to my grandmother's house were magical even if people didn't have much. I recall eating Yorkshire pudding (square, you southern softies, not round!) in my hand fresh from the Yorkshire range (a cast iron oven next to the open fire) in the living room/kitchen behind the shop. It was perhaps the most delicious thing I have ever eaten.
I also recall playing with the takings (all small change) when my grandmother was counting up after close of business and I suppose it gave me a small handle of basic economics; it was all about supply and demand and at a price people could afford. Stacks of threepenny bits made wonderful, if small, castles. I also recall the tin in what was called my toy cupboard which was overflowing with cigarette cards. It would be worth a fortune today. There were footballers and cricketers and warships and biplanes and film stars and a whole bunch dealing with air-raid precautions. I remember looking at an illustration of a man in a steel helmet with a stirrup pump. For putting out small fires, the card told me.
How did my grandmother amass such a fine if random collection? When the men from the steel works came into the shop to buy cigarettes often they would immediately open the packet (which were flimsy and the cards were I believe there to strengthen the packet) and toss the card on the counter. The cards were put into the box in the toy cupboard to eventually amuse me and my younger cousin. I just wish I had kept those cards, but that's why things become valuable. Not everyone saves everything.
I also remember the little carved wooden dog, and that was made by a man who came into the shop to buy cigarettes too.
He was a German prisoner of war and like a lot of low ranking captured soldiers was put to work in some minor task, and he was given something to do at at the steel works nearby. These priosners were guarded by a couple of Tommies with their standard Lee-Enfield rifles but I imagine the Germans didn't want to make trouble. Just getting out of the camp where they were detained was much better that being stuck behind barbed wire. They did have an officer who came with them who my grandmother said was a Prussian, and he stood very stiffly and apart from the other ranks and would click his heels when spoken to. Very proper.
I have no idea how closely these prisoners saw themselves associated with Nazi cause. Possibly not very much; they had done their duty and now just wanted to go home.
These prisoners would gather on the large patch of pavement outside my grandmother's shop and wait for the army lorry that would come to collect them and take them back to the camp on the edge of the moors. I think the PoWs were paid something because they had a little spending money and would go into my grandmother's shop as they waited for the lorry to buy cigarettes and sweets (war-time rationing meant that all the sweets were locally made, and that meant liquorice allsorts and nothing else; Sheffield people would have given anything for toffees!)
The Germans didn't speak much English but they tried to be polite and one day a lad named Fritz (or maybe that was what they were all called) presented my grandmother with this little carved Scotty dog. He must have had a penknife of some kind because it was a beautiful little crafted dog, sat on its haunches with head turned slightly to one side. It wasn't an expensive piece of wood and I have no idea how he got it; perhaps he found it in the steel works or at his PoW camp. What he had created from that was astonishing. He had even got some boot polish and stained the carving into a rich walnut brown, and I loved that dog and now I even love more the idea that he spent time to do it and gave it away to someone who he had been told was his enemy. Just a little thank you from one person to another that went nowhere near undoing the damage between two warring nations, but had a resonance that touches me now.
I imagine when the war was over he went home and time being what it is he probably is no longer with us. I hope however he made lots of lovely carvings for his own family when he got back. They would have loved them.
The point of this, if there is a point, is that war may be terrible beyond belief but ordinary people don't stop being people. They still care in little ways and even leave small legacies behind that reach through the years.
Wherever you ended up, Fritz, thank you for that wonderful gift.
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