There you are, walking down the street slowly at night. You approach a dark corner and become hesitant, your heart beating faster, your breathing quickening, mind racing. Every evil thought comes into your mind. What could be around that corner. With sweaty palms you slowly reach for the wall to get a grip on something so you don’t fall over, then carefully move your head first then your body to follow and turn to peer around the corner. You jump as you see a figure on the ground. However it is only a stray cat and runs away when it sees you. Fear took over your mind in this situation and made you take a safe scenario and turn it into a horrifying task. For most soldiers they went through the same thought process in World War Two, however for them it wasn’t a stray cat around the corner, but am enemy soldier ready to attack.
A few weeks ago we had the amazing privilege and opportunity to have a man named Helmut Lemmke, a World War Two veteran, come into our classroom and speak to us about his stories and experiences from the time when he was on the battlefield.
Helmut Lemmke 1944
Mostly in class we learn about the ally side of the war, stories from British, Canadian and American soldiers. However Mr. Helmut Lemmke is German and fought on the Russian front for the axis side. Hearing his point of view on the war wasn’t that different then from some of the stories of a Canadian during the war. They all had one great thing in common. Fear. 
Our class meeting Helmut, March 2017
We heard of many times where Helmut was scared as he was fighting in the war. This lead me to think about the concept of fear more and how it effected the soldiers fighting. I created the question, “In what ways did fear help and protect soldiers during the war?”
Gabi, Anatolia and I sat down together and discussed this concept along with Gabi’s concept of creativity in the face of danger. We talked about stories Helmut had told us, connected our two ideas and talked about the similarities of the two and put this discussion into a podcast for you all to listen.
Enjoy!