The Letter
Dear Bill,
It is strange to write to you like this, when the last time we spoke you were guarding me with a rifle. But I have thought of you often these twenty years. You were kind to me in the camp in Texas, when others were not. You brought me cigarettes when you knew I did not smoke, so I could trade them for extra bread. You taught me baseball words I did not understand.
I want you to know that I am not the man I was. Not the soldier, certainly. I was eighteen when I was captured in Normandy. I believed what I had been told about the war. I was wrong.
In the POW camp, I learned English from your books. I read 'The Grapes of Wrath' and wept for the Joad family. I realized that Americans were not the monsters my teachers had described. You were just people, like us, caught in something larger than yourselves.
After I returned to Germany in 1947, I found my home destroyed and my parents dead. I had nothing. But I had your words, and your kindness, and the memory of baseball games played between guards and prisoners on Sunday afternoons.
I became a teacher. I teach my students about the war—not the battles, but the choices. I tell them about you, Bill. I tell them that in the worst of times, one person can choose to be kind.
If you ever come to Hamburg, please look for me. I would like to buy you a beer and tell you about my grandchildren. I would like to thank you, properly, for my life.
Your friend,
Fritz
[William 'Bill' Harrison and Friedrich Mueller corresponded until Harrison's death in 2003. Mueller visited Texas in 2005 and met Harrison's children. He established a scholarship for German-American exchange students in Harrison's name.]
It is strange to write to you like this, when the last time we spoke you were guarding me with a rifle. But I have thought of you often these twenty years. You were kind to me in the camp in Texas, when others were not. You brought me cigarettes when you knew I did not smoke, so I could trade them for extra bread. You taught me baseball words I did not understand.
I want you to know that I am not the man I was. Not the soldier, certainly. I was eighteen when I was captured in Normandy. I believed what I had been told about the war. I was wrong.
In the POW camp, I learned English from your books. I read 'The Grapes of Wrath' and wept for the Joad family. I realized that Americans were not the monsters my teachers had described. You were just people, like us, caught in something larger than yourselves.
After I returned to Germany in 1947, I found my home destroyed and my parents dead. I had nothing. But I had your words, and your kindness, and the memory of baseball games played between guards and prisoners on Sunday afternoons.
I became a teacher. I teach my students about the war—not the battles, but the choices. I tell them about you, Bill. I tell them that in the worst of times, one person can choose to be kind.
If you ever come to Hamburg, please look for me. I would like to buy you a beer and tell you about my grandchildren. I would like to thank you, properly, for my life.
Your friend,
Fritz
[William 'Bill' Harrison and Friedrich Mueller corresponded until Harrison's death in 2003. Mueller visited Texas in 2005 and met Harrison's children. He established a scholarship for German-American exchange students in Harrison's name.]