Kbnpilot (France)

When I turned 15 I was allowed to spend vacation time by my grandmother. She was very tidy, and I would not understand why she would keep this big aluminum ladle with all kind of bumps and dents on it. When I asked her why , she said to me, "This ladle is your family's history. This dent here was made by your father's head, this one comes from your aunt C… this one here from your aunt J…. , like I said, it is your family's history, which is why I keep it"

My father and his friends had gone fishing and brought back so much mullet fish that they could feed the whole village, which was rather unusual, mullet fish being hard to catch. Nazi soldiers had just been defeated and sent back as prisoners of war. They had destroyed as many weapons as they could, but some had been forgotten in hideouts. My father (a teenager at the time) and his friends had found a highly efficient and fast way to catch fish.

They would attach a rope to the handle of hand grenades, trigger them, spin them around their head and throw them in the harbor where the explosion would bring whole schools of fish to the surface….

They just had to fill the baskets to bring a lot of food to the family….

My father did just that, on this day and when he reached my grandmother's house; with a big smile on his face, he had a big surprise: Whahack…. The ladle crashed on his head……

It was at a time before internet and even before phone lines were installed, but at a time when any news about wrongdoing would travel at the speed of sound……

He learned the lesson the hard way…It was the last time he went fishing with hand grenades.

A father holds a 14-day-old baby girl on his arms.[Photo/IC]