Wartime Knitting

Coded knitting by Sandra Gutierrez/Popular Science

Black shawl covering grey hair, she sits quietly, knitting needles clicking, invisible to the German soldiers arrogantly striding past her, their eyes scanning suspiciously the country people on the platform.  They aggressively approach old men, shoving with rifles held aslant against any they suspect of loitering - spying! 

She could knit with her eyes closed, and so with lashes lowered she counts the cars of the train as they rock slowly past, watching for the ones that she was told to look for.   Deliberately dropped stitches, creating holes, are for troop cars; two purled stitches for each artillery car, then finally another 4 purled stitches to signify the end of the train. 

As she continues on with plain knitting, waiting innocently until many minutes have passed before standing stiffly, this elderly grandmother, her fingers gnarled and her back bent, thinks of her own grandmother who taught her to knit when she was a young girl with blonde braids and bare feet, who climbed apple trees blossoming in the bright Spring of peacetime.  How shocked her grandmother would have been to see this uneven piece of work, riddled as though with bulletholes, and most certainly - how proud.