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I had learned to eat simply, after dreaming about hiding in the woods during the war, having nothing to eat for a month at a time, except for a private stash of potatoes I had stolen from a farm. The worst part was the shame of keeping them a secret from my friends, for fear that if I shared them I would only go hungry later. It was a desolate dream, dark and tumultuous, filled with vague images of flies and cold and death .
In the dream I was young, maybe 17, and with some friends had deserted from the German army. We'd been conscripted as general labour, and left as soon as we were called up for active duty. Machine guns we didn't have - pick and shovel we had. The thought of combat was too much for us, so we ran away and hid out in the woods, waiting for the end of the war. It might already have ended for all we knew, but we hid in fear for months. When I woke up, I was only able to lose the feeling of fear by thinking about flying over Paris on my way to Linz .