Frankie
When Roger had been a young boy his parents had taken him to visit his uncle, Baron Franz von Stein. The Baron was known in the family as Frankie, and he lived in a castle high in the mountains in the area we now call The Black Forrest in southwest Germany. Frankie was married to a beautiful young girl, Helga, who was the daughter of the local Burger Master; the Burger Master was a big cheese in local politics, like a mayor. Frankie was a medical scientist, a surgeon we would call him today, although in those days much of his work was experimental, his main activity was devoted toward developing painless transplant surgery.
As a young man Frankie wanted to have a large family, at least six or seven children, but it was not to be. Frankie and Helga tried and tried to have a family but for some unknown reason they never had children. Frankie swore that somehow, some way, some day he would find a way of giving Helga the son she so desperately desired.
Aside:
The characters in this story are German, so you will need to read the sections in italics with a German accent. Here is some practice for you.
"Szo, yu vant zee cheece burger wiz rrregular flyce. Zat vill be vun sixty fife."
"Sorry, I've only got one sixty three"
"Szo, ve haf vays of making yu pay, yu know. Hermann fvetch me zat brratvurst."
Easy isn't it.
Back to the plot.
A war broke out between Frankie's town and the nearby town of Freiburg, and he was enlisted as a military surgeon. Many of his town’s folk suffered horrifying injuries, in particular severed limbs, poor old Frankie had to work twenty hours a day to get through all the operations putting his town folk back together. Then one night he had been on duty for more than twenty four hours when a new batch of injured townsfolk were wheeled in, some were in a terrible state, bits of bodies were piled up everywhere.
"Zis is terrrrible," Frankie muttered to himself. "I can't efen be schure vich bit belongs to vich body, ah vell, zey vill haf to take potluck."
He strapped the first patient to the operating table.
"Ah hello, it's Fritz Shtruddle, isn't it?"
"Ya Heir Doktor, please be quick I am in grreat pain, I seem to haf lost my prrivate parts."
"Zen I best gif you an injection ov Schnapps to ease zee pain."
"Very vell Heir Doktor."
Frankie filled a needle with Schnapps, "Now zen, just zee liddle shcratch."
“Now let’s see, I haf zee schmall set ov prrivates over zere.”
"Nine, zey cannot be mine Heir Doktor, mine are quite large und haf zee birrth mark near zee tip."
Frankie was beginning to feel really tired; his eyes were sore,
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