At War45-01-0980Borrowed Night

Words at War. National Broadcasting Company, in cooperation with the Council of Books and War Time, presents another program in the widely discussed series Words at War, dramatizing the most representative books to come out of this great world conflict.

Tonight's book was written by Oscar Rave, who tells the exciting story of an Alsatian soldier who escaped from the German Army through the device of pretending to be sick, and then, But listen to the story, it's called borrowed night.

Somewhere in Europe a tired, weary-faced man writes a letter to a friend. My dear Klei, I don't know if you will ever get this letter, but because I promised to let you know how I made out if I possibly could, I must write it now.

No one could have foreseen all that has happened to me. I would never have dreamed those German doctors could be so infernally clever. To remember when the Germans forced us Alsations into their army, they considered us stupid.

Stupidly. I'm not brilliant. But I was one Alsation that wouldn't stay in their army. I'd get out. Some way I'd get out. I had to get out. And then there was a way. It was dangerous, but I would try it.

Mollingering it. Yes, that was it. I would be a Mollingerr. It was my life and I was going to pit it against the vaunted German medicals. It was safety in Strasbourg or death on the Russian front from a German firing squad.

My disease, traumatic neurosis. I had to learn by heart the symptoms. One excessive perspiration at night. Two dizziness. Three an incurable distortion of the truth. In same line. I had it all planned. Lack of food would induce dizziness.