A Late Blooming Truth

In the middle of a Thai hot summer, we ventured into the high hills of North Thailand. We were medics, a small out-reach team serving the scattered rural villages of that remote area. Klauss, a dour civic engineer, by his side, his wife, a pretty Chinese nurse. As it happened, Klauss brought along a visiting acquaintance, an avuncular German. On the way home to the leprosy institute, we pulled the Land Rover into a wayside village shop to eat sticky rice, chilies, and salted fish. I disremember how the conversation turned to the second world war, I think the talkative German instigated that subject, declaring how the allies had propagandized the facts. I spoke coldly of how my father (a Hurricane fighter pilot), had died in the Battle of Britain, and how I had seen all the disgustingly savage films of the concentration camp victims. The kraut just glared red faced at his feet while soft spoken, kindly Klauss struggled to change the conversation. That was many years ago, now I feel compelled to confess that I had blatantly lied! Dad was an air-raid warden who rode a peddle bike, and never left London during the war. Yet strangely, that was the first time I thought I could be, should be a poet.