Tag #126619 - Interview #78137 (güler orgun)

My mother had a recollection about her father's military service. As my mother was born in 1900, she was 14 years old when my grandfather went to war at the outbreak of World War I [6]. He was a fair man, blond, with blue eyes and pink cheeks. My mother remembered, 'One day, a certain time after he left, there was a knock on the door.' My mother answered it and saw a dark, almost black, thin man she didn't recognize. She ran to her mother saying, 'There is a soldier at the door.' It seems that my grandfather had 'dried out' while he was away and turned into someone emaciated and dark.

Incidentally, in normal times he would drink a small glass of raki [7] every evening, just one. So, when that was not possible, he lost his joy and good spirits. 'When he came back,' my mother remembered, 'he started to drink his raki again and soon regained his former weight and fair and pink- cheeked appearance.