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I had my first chocolate bar at five years old. I'll never forget the delicious, comforting taste. It was World war I'll I lived with my family in the Lithuanian town of Taurage when the Russian armyswept west toward Nazi Germany.
A month later, I ran away from Taurage and took a train to Hamburg alone. 1 lived on the streets, like thousands of other children in the city. I survived by stealing food. Still, there was never enough.
Then the American army arrived. They looked so big and healthy. Stealing food from them was easy. I'd go into the mess hall quietly, hide under a table and leave with some fresh bread.
One afternoon as I waited around a mess tent secretly in search of food, a huge hand lifted me up by the collar. An American soldier. "Got you" He shouted.
I was scared, and I could see it upset him. "It's okay, kid," he said. He reached into his fatigue jacket and handed me a chocolate bar. "Here, have some of this." I unwrapped it and took a small bite. I thought I'd gone to heaven.
The soldier took me and some other homeless children to an orphanage run by the Red Cross. Four years later I was sent to an orphanage in Seattle, America. Soon after, I lived with an American family in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Again, as with that first taste of chocolate, it was as if I'd gone to heaven. Later, I joined the Army, then attended college under the GI Bill. Finally I earned a master's degree in clinical social work. I want to pay back all the people who were so good to me.
In 1983 I went to work for the Department of Veteran Affairs as a clinical counselor, treating the troubled soldiers who suffer from wartime posttraumatic syndrome.
The troubled soldiers sit in my office and wonder how I can possibly understand them or help ease their pain. That is when I tell them my story, and about the soldier who saved my life.
"I never did learn his name, but I remember his kindness," I say. And then I open a drawer in my desk that is always full and offer them some chocolate.
