The post you are reporting:
My earliest memory of snow is in the Volkspark, a ghastly concrete suburb of West Berlin where we lived in the early 60s when Dad was posted to RAF Butzweilerhof. My abiding memory of German winters is of bitterly cold winds and huge piles of snow; RAF roads were constantly ploughed in order to keep the bases and married quarters accessible at all times, but this particular winter has come down through family legend as particularly severe, and the snowdrifts caused by the roads being constantly ploughed were in the order of 10-12ft high.
Mum and I had been out shopping at the NAAFI, and on the way home we had stopped at the playground so that I would be worn out by bedtime and get off to sleep without giving my parents yet another night of misery. Mum let me play on the swings - they were the old fashioned sort with a metal bar that came down over your tummy so that you sat in a sort of 'box' seat that prevented you from falling out. Kids loved taking the swing higher and higher, and in fact I do remember one kid taking the swing right over the bar, thus doing a full loop-the-loop, which earned him/her a severe bollocking from mummy. I never had the nerve to go for the full loop, but loved taking it as high as I could; this particular day I took the swing as high as I dared - at the very top of one swing, the safety bar in front of me opened up and I began to slip out from underneath the bar. In panic I grabbed the bar with my hands, which had the instant effect of turning me into a trapeze artist and I was catapulted through the air as the impetus of the swing forced me to let go.
Mum later described her feeling of abject panic as I flew through the air, but she needn't have worried as I landed at the top of one the huge snow drifts! I remember the feeling of relief at not being killed being replaced almost instantly by the sensation of freezing cold around my nether regions as my landing had torn the seat from my trousers, and I was up to my backside (literally) in frozen snow. I can still remember the embarrassment of having to walk home in the freezing cold through all the houses and flats with no trousers on........