It was just a coincidence and me being interested in that sort of stuff. I'd never heard of Carl Edon before.
BTW, I typed out the full text of the story (aren't I excessively kind and thoughtful?
) So here it is. I'll still look out for those newspaper cuttings, though.
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Taken from “The Children That Time Forgot”, by Peter & Mary Harrison, Sinclair Publishing Edition, 1989:
When young Carl Edon plays wsith his toy planes, his parents believe that it is not purely childish behaviour but is an action replay of the time when Carl remembers he was a pilot in the German Air force.
“As soon as he could talk he used to tell us that he once crashed his plan into the windows of a building,” says his mother, Valerie. “We gather that he eventually died from multiple injuries sustained in the crash. We thought it strange that he should say such a thing, for as a tiny toddler he never showed any real interest in adventure stories and he had no time for looking at war films or such things.”
Valerie Edon went on to explain that as he grew older and started to gain more command over his speech the story became more detailed and he told it in such a matter-of-fact way that she and her husband felt that they could no longer dismiss it out of hand as a little toddler’s day-dream.
The incident which really persuaded the Edons that Carl’s story had a ring of truth to it occurred when Carl fist learnt to draw and to colour. Like most small children he went through the stage of experimenting with his coloured pencils and crayons and he had the usual colouring-in books and children’s puzzle books in which he used to join up the dots to make a picture. One day he sat with his crayons and colouring-in book, but instead of colouring in the drawings, his mother noticed that he had drawn peculiar looking badges and motifs all over the page.
The neatness of the drawing was the thing that most caught Valerie’s attention. Unlike the normal scribbles of a 3 yr old, Carl’s little drawings were definite precise examples of various badges and insignia which Valerie confesses were completely foreign to her, except for one little drawing. There on the top corner his colouring book Carl had drawn a perfect German swastika inside a circle, thus making it look like a badge. There were other small badges drawn with the expertise of a professional artist.
When Valerie questioned her son about the badges he replied, “That’s the kind of badges I swore on my uniform when I used to drive my plane.”
More surprises were in store when shortly after Carl’s 5th birthday he drew the cockpit of his plane. He remembered the exact positions of all the various controls and he explained to his bewildered parents the functions of each lever, dial and gauge. He even knew the location of the button which he remembers having to press in order to release the bombs.
Carl’s father was intrigued with the amount of minute detail in his small son’s drawings, particularly as he knew that Carl had never ever been in a plane of any description and had certainly never been in a cockpit. “I don’t see how he could have got the information,” said his father, “He certainly couldn’t have got it from a picture book because we would have noticed, and in any case he did not possess any picture books containing German planes or cockpits.”
The little boy can remember how he enlisted in the Luftwaffe, the German Air Force, when he was 19 years of age and he was stationed in a large air-force camp with a lot of huts in rows. Carl explains, “The huts had sinks in them, but no taps for the water. The water came out of a pump.” The boy recalls that he and his comrades were all trained in first aid and anyone who was injured was treated by the men themselves. All of them were called upon to perform this duty.
Valerie and her husband were taken aback when their young son suddenly told them that he had been made to salute a framed picture of Hitler. “I couldn’t believe my ears,” said Valerie, “I had no idea that he ever knew, or had even heard of, the name of Hitler. It certainly was never a topic of conversation at home.”
According to Carl, the troops were ordered to gather in a large assembly hall. He says, “There was a picture of Hitler on the wall and we all had to stamp our feet and salute to this picture.” He can demonstrate the stamp and the salute, which he executes as if they were second nature to him.
In reply to his mothers question about what he wore when he was in the hall, he says, “Grey trousers tucked into knee-high leather boots and a black jacket.” His parents did not really believe that what their son described was a proper German uniform, so without telling their child they went along to their local library and looked up some books, only to find that Carl had given a perfectly correct description of his uniform, badges and the cockpit of his plane.
His parents were able to check even the smallest details of Carl’s drawings against photographs which they found in an old book on German planes of the last war.
Carl can reconstruct in chilling detail his crash into the windows of the building. He was flying low over some buildings and he must have lost consciousness for a few moments: as he described things, “It went all black for a moment.” When he came round in the cockpit of his plane he was aware of a building rushing towards him at great speed. He desperately wrenched at the controls in a frantic effort to avert the collision, but he was too late. The plane bulldozed its way right through the large glass windows of the building.
Carl remembers the horrendous sensation which swept over him as he realized that he had lost his right leg. The shock of the crash and the loss of his limb, combined with his other injuries, affected him so severely that he died very shortly after the crash.
Sadly the fatal blow affected not only Carl, but a pretty young fraulein from Carl’s village back in Germany, to whom he was engaged to be married. They had been childhood sweethearts and had grown up together, although she was several years younger than he. He remembered his thoughts just before he died and how he felt great compassion for his young fiancée, knowing that she would ultimately be given the shattering news of his death. In Carl’s typical understatement, “I felt so sorry for her.”
Although Carl cannot recall much of what happened after he died, he is acutely aware of having had a younger brother who was also a pilot, and the strange thing is that he is convinced that this younger brother died shortly after he himself bled to death amongst the twisted debris of his wrecked plane.
He has clear memories of his father in his previous life, whose name was Fritz. Carl seems to have been very fond of the man, who appears to have been a jovial character. Carl says of him, “He was so funny and always made me laugh, and he took me for nice walks in the woods.” He told Carl all about the trees and the flowers and plants that they would see on their rambles in the woods near their home in Germany. The village they lived in was picturesque, and nestled among hills and lush woodlands. “It was not a very big place,” says Carl, “But I liked it.”
His mother was the disciplinarian of the family and Carl remembers her as being small and plump with dark curly hair and smallish glasses which she used to wear on the end of her nose. “She was a bit bossy,” says the boy, “And I always had to do what I was told.”
He was made to do his share of the household tasks and he remembers that his regular chore was to gather the wood for the large open fires in their home. He has distinct memories of chopping up long tree trunks into small logs, then carting them home in his barrow to be stored as fuel. The smell of the newly chopped logs made a vivid impression on the young boy. He describes it as “a nice fresh smell which always reminds me of the woods.”
Other smells which linger in Carl’s consciousness are those of cooking. He remembers how he used to be served a type of soup. “It wasn’t like the soup I get now,” he says, “It was a dark red colour and was quite thick. My mother made it nearly every day.” Then Carl added with a laugh, “I used to get other things to eat as well, only I can’t remember what the other things were like. But I know I got them as well as the soup.”
Valerie Edon wonders if there could be any connection between Carl’s memories of his past life and other members of her family. She says, “My sister in law is German by birth and her father was a German pilot during the last war.” She wonders if it is only coincidence that this man was also killed in action, being brought down by the British while he was at the controls of his plane.
While this sister in law was still a baby, her mother re-married an Englishman in Germany and then moved to England where the family have since settled. The baby was adopted by the English step father. Valerie muses over the possibility that by some strange twist of fate, she has given birth to the child who was really meant for her sister in law to bear.
Valerie’s other two children, Darren and Angela, are completely different from their brother Carl. Both are well built with dark hair and tan complexions, whereas Carl is of a slight build with pale blond hair and white eyelashes.
The Edons are still wondering why they felt compelled to call their little boy by the name of Carl. “It is a most incredible thing,” says Valerie, “Because we decided to call him Carl not knowing that he would have any connections with Germany.”
At a visit to Carl’s school on a parents’ evening recently, Valerie spoke to Carl’s teacher who said, “He has strange eyes, and when I an talking to him about anything his eyes pierce straight through me.” The teacher went on to tell Valerie that if she gives Carl a sum to do, he gives her the correct answer in a flash. “When I ask him how he worked it out, he just doesn’t answer me. He seems to think that there is no need to bother working things out when he knows the answer already.”
Carl, now an extremely bright 9 year old, has a perfectionist streak in him which belies his years. He is ultra precise in his manner, and is more than particular about his appearance and clothes. His mother takes great pains to have everything just so for him: the collars of his shirts must be beautifully ironed, and everything has to be scrupulously clean at all times. Could this possibly be a hangover from his strict military days?
“We had a visitor in for tea recently,” laughed Valerie, “And Carl almost frightened the life out of her by solemnly describing in amazing detail all about Adolf Hitler, accompanied by goose steps and salutes.
“As he gets older, though,” says Valerie, “Carl doesn’t say too much about his mysterious past life. It’s as though he only remembers the odd flash every now and then.” His mother has noticed that he is not particularly interested in watching war films on television but when he does he sometimes points out a mistake in the German uniform. Once he pointed to an actor playing a German NCO and said, “He is just like my sergeant.”
Perhaps the reason for Carl’s lack of enthusiasm for war films could be that they remind him too much of the real thing. Who could blame him for not wanting to bring back to his conscious mind those horrific days of violence and death?
Carole