Well, seems everyone is happy to accept that children can pick up mental waves from the past, or are tuned into things that adults aren't, and that scientists say it could be so.
Well, sorry, no disrespect to OVS or the rest of you but someone's got to stand up for science here.
Of course, not having first hand experience of the event, I can't really criticize it too much but a few points do occur.
Q: What did they look like?
A: They were mad, and wearing either grey or very darkish green... no definately some kind of greyish color, the helmets were even darker.
Why "mad?" Scared, focused, confused maybe, but mad. Anger isn't the look I'd expect to see on a general basis on German soldiers faces at Normandy. Some of em maybe, but all of em?
Q: Were there a lot of them?
A: Yes, hiding behind trees, and in the bunkers, in all the little corners or behind the walls. Crouched down, or kinda kneeling.
Well let's be fair here. You say you daughter had no knowledge of Germans in WW2, but you'd just taken here all through a battlefield AND she didn't tell you these thing s at the time.
It's no great wonder that if she was imagining that battle ground filled with troops, she'd imaging them crouching behind the obstacles.
Q: Did they have nice uniforms, or were they loose?
A: The uniforms were nice, with lot's of buttons in the front and things on the shoulders.
You led the answer. Your question implies that the opposite of “nice” is “loose”, for starters, thus priming her to mentally think of a more dressy uniform than “loose” by which you were I assume fishing for a description of a GI’s uniform.
You say your daughter is not allowed to watch you play WW2 games and that you have no pictures of German soldiers in the house. Can you guarantee that? What about the box art for those PC games you play? Has you daughter seen splash screens for the games before you’ve told here she can’t watch?
Do you have any WW2 movies on DVD? More box art.
Can you really guarantee that she’s never seen at least a few shots, either game/movie or real of a German soldier, including outside your house. At school?
Q: OK, how about any medals? Anything on the head, or chest?
A: Yes, something like a circle with a star in it. On the chest.
Ditto for above. You gave her two choices, the head and chest. She chose one.
Q: Were you scared?
A: Yes, but I knew they weren't trying to hurt me. So I didn't think anything of it, but there were a lot of them. Everywhere I looked. They were moving around, like army men do. Kind of crawling, but bent over. When we would walk out of a bunker, I would see one in the grass, or behind a tree. Then when I was in the car, I could see them looking at me from behind a fence in a field. Sometimes a lot of them, sometimes only one or two.
“Yes, but I knew they weren't trying to hurt me. So I didn't think anything of it”
This just doesn’t make sense if what she is describing really happened to her (and with your description of her personality at the end of the original post). She’s scared, but doesn’t think anything of it?
“They were moving around, like army men do”
So she knows how “army men” move. So she’s seen some type of soldiers, either current or historical, in movie or stills perhaps.
Q: Why didn't you say something to me?
A: I couldn't, I didn't know what they were. I knew they weren't real, so you wouldn't believe me anyway.
A child is seeing ghostly soldiers all around her for what seems like an extended time, and you did not pick up a hint of discomfort from her at the time?
At the time she made no mention of it, yet did she seem at all disturbed, or just interested?
Q: Were there different types?
A: Yes, some had different colors. Like a Dark color and and a greenish color.
We’ve established she knows what soldiers look like, so saying they wore “dark” and greenish” is not exactly startling.
I asked her to draw some stuff and try to see what she saw in her head. What she drew scared the hell out of me.
I asked about the gun the soldier was carrying... She proceeded to draw what resembled the MP40. She then tried to draw the helmet but she couldn't get it right. I then drew the front view of a standard German helmet.
You drew a helmet. So you led her response again at that point.
She said that was it. "it was pointy on the sides when you looked straight at it". I asked her about boots, she said she thought so, but could not tell as they were never standing up... which is true, most German combat poses are crouched down, and running.
Sorry, but that’s really a stretch. Because she can’t describe the boots, you decide it’s because German tactical doctrine is to be crouched down? To me this really seems like you’ve bought into her imaginings so much you are now constructing explanations around them.
Next was the camoflage... which was insane. I asked her first to draw what she thought the soldier was wearing. She drew a German Tunic. She said it was tight, and looked very nice. Not sagging, and had buttons. She drew the 'medal' right where is should be, on the right breast. Next she bagan to describe the colors and shapes of the Camoflage.
Again, your previous prodding above could be seen as implying there are loose uniforms (not nice) and not loose uniforms (nice). So she mentions this isn’t “sagging”.
"He looked different than the others". He was in the bushes, and had a very dark helmet, a really big gun, bigger than the others, and his clothes were funny colors. Like something green and a dark color, with different shapes. I don't know, I can't describe it."
After this, we left. I kept the paper, and we went to the library. I found a WWII book with a lot of pictures in it. I showed her pictures of British, American and German soldiers. She pointed out the German soldiers right away... 'that's the helmet, that's the jacket... and that's the gun!' I showed her a color drawing of the MP40, amoungst a bunch of other WWII weapons on the same page, she immediately picked it out of the page. Now it gets better
You showed her the pics. Given her description, which you could be seen as having led with the whole “loose not loose” thing, she was bound to pick the German soldiers out.
And that without examining the whole point of whether you can actually guarantee that she has NEVER seen them before.
And if you ask her up front, she’s going to say no she hasn’t because by this stage she’s definitely alert to the fact that Daddy is awed and pleased by what she is saying and will respond accordingly. She’s an 8-year old after all.
The same argument goes for you points that follow on from this about the Fallschirmjager, and the medals. You believe she has never seen any of this so it is miraculous. But again, you took her to Normandy and showed her a battleground, you must have told her what it is she was seeing there. And yet you can guarantee tat she has never seen the imagery that would go with this? After the fact as well, since she mentioned nothing at the time?
Again, my daughter has never seen pictures of WWII soldiers, other than her Great Uncle's 82nd Airborne Mess uniform. She has no idea what these men look like, nor do I watch anything related to war on the TV when she is home.
Again, how can you guarantee this?
She is a fun-loving, goofy, energetic kid that always has a smile on her face, and is very happy to simply be alive. Even when we talked about this, she was happy to tell me, and gave as much detail as possible. She was not afraid, and never once thought twice about describing what she saw.
And finally, this seems to me like a child explaining her imaginings and aware that she is pleasing her father in the process.
At 8 years old she’s old enough to know that seeing soldiers all around her when no one else can is not usual, and yet she treats it as something that doesn’t frighten her?
Again, no disrespect to anyone who wants this to be a supernatural experience, but isn’t there far more human and likely explanations than that?
