morfar as a prisoner-of war

My Mother is the guest writer here.
I was only 9 years old that cold, snowy morning in February in 1945. WW II was raging and we were awakened by a loud hammering on the front door. Mother threw her robe on, ran downstairs and opened. And there she stood face to face with a band of Norwegian traitors and German soldiers who said my father was under arrest. They demanded to be let in, but Mother told them that dad was very ill and was unable to get out of bed. They then made their way in and up the stairs to the bedroom where they ordered my dad to get dressed and to come with them. He tried to explain how sick he was, but there was no way around it, he had to come with them.
My baby brother, Arnstein, was asleep in his crib in my parents' room. I and my sister, Mette, 3 years younger than I, were sharing a bed and lay scared stiff while all this was going on. One soldier stuck his head the door and smiled at us, but I whispered to Mette:"Don't smile at him"! He was probably a nice, young boy conscripted to go on that infamous rampage called WW II.
It was the bleakest day. The prisoners were rounded up in the classrooms of a school where they were interrogated and worse. Father never gave us the details. We learned that one could bring food and other necessities to the prisoners, so Mother sent me down to that school with things for my father. Mother had told me to say to the guard:"Essen fur Martin Dahl"
He was marching back and forth and was armed. I told him my errand, he nodded bruskly and let me by. I walked into the courtyard, which was filled with soldiers, handed my bundle to one of them, who took it inside the building. It was very cold, and the soldiers were stomping their feet and moving around to keep warm. I just stood there on the porch, not knowing what to do. One of the prisoners, who later became my math teacher, was led out to me and asked me to go to his wife and fetch some things for him, which I did. After that, I took up my post on the porch of the school again not knowing what else I was supposed to do. One of the officers came over, bent down to me and spoke to me in German very slowly and kindly, gesticulating so I would understand. I just looked at him mutely, not understanding a thing, of course. It started to get dark, and I understood that nothing was going to change, so I started on my way home. Up the hill a ways, I saw an arc of light go up outside the school, and I ran home crying and told my mother they had shot my father. Strangely enough, she took it calmly, as I remember. Later, we heard that it was just some kind of a firework signal.
I remember that Mother's brothers were in the kitchen when I came in the door. They had come to be a support to Mother. She was very agitated--pacing the floor the while. The atmosphere was one of great fear.The next day, the prisoners were stowed down in the hold of a steamboat, men as well as women, with nothing to even sit on, and for hours and hours they sailed out the fjord and over a part of the North Sea to Ålesund. The Germans had taken Aspøy School to use as a prison, so that's where they housed the prisoners. They were issued empty fish dumpling cans to eat out of. They had to wash them in cold water and instead of soap, they had to scrub them clean with sand. Every morning, the prisoners were ordered to start building a pier on the harbor. They had to lift heavy boulders in place, and, of course, this was way too strenuous for my father in his weak condition, so after 14 days he stared to vomit blood on the job. He was then considered useless and was released from captivity. He could barely carry his suitcase and walk, but was determined to make his way to my mother's cousin and her husband's house, who he knew lived on Kirkegata (Church Street). They were very good to him, took him in, and the next day they saw to it that he got on the steamer back to our town, Volda. He was very ill by now, but he had been an active sportsman all his life, so he was loath to get a taxi. Instead, he walked up the long, steep hill to our house bravely carrying his suitcase. And to our great joy, in the door came our dear dad! We ran to him, but he just sank down on a chair in the corner of our dining room so emaciated and pale. This was the first time he didn't lift us up and hold us on his lap.
The doctor said he had pleurisy, but Father couldn't eat the wretched bread that was available; he got a ration of white bread, which he could stomach. But his health got worse and worse; every day, he came home from the bank where he worked, the perspiration pouring down his bald head and face, groaning, all stooped over.
Finally, he was sent to the hospital in Molde: the diagnosis was acute ulcers to the stomach The doctors operated on him under local anesthesia with my father watching the whole procedure in the mirror over his head finding it all very interesting until the anesthesia began to lose its effect. He begged for a new dose, but the doctor said they were almost finished, but no, he had to have more, as he couldn't endure the pain, so they gave him another dose. His stomach had wasted away, so the doctor did a wonderful thing: he took one of the 12 diverticulae and fashioned a new stomach out of that for dad.
Dad came home, he ate tiny, but very frequent meals, his new stomach grew and developed into a perfectly normal stomach, and the day I saw him smoking his pipe and was raking the front yard I knew that now my father was a well man and that that dark chapter of our lives was well behind us. Dad had a wonderful constitution; he didn't have a sick day as far as i remember after that. Unfortunately, he turned blind because of glaucoma the last 5 years of his life, but he lived till he was 87 years and 7 months old. He died in 1987. Too bad he just missed being a great-grandfather; C. was born two mos. after dad passed away.
One more thing here: my sister and I played operating room for a long time after Dad's ordeal. Using a blunt knife, the kind you eat with, one of us would lie on the floor underwent the "procedure" executed, usually by me! Dad sometimes showed us his ferocious scar, and oh, we were awestruck, I assure you!

i“Food for Martin Dahl”