I had a lot of fun with Jeff, the American prisoner who ran the 469th’s unit newspaper, Der Kauz (The Screech Owl, or, The Oddball).
He spoke and spelled very proper High German, which made him a good editor.
Dialects and accents can get us into trouble when writing a standard language; the other day, someone asked me how to spell the name of Godiva, the naked lady on the horse (the tax protester). She’d written “Godiver,” which is the northeast US dialect pronunciation.
Sorau, huh? Not for very much longer…
I THINK I remember why I used that town — for the poignancy that it would be soon destroyed. Right?