大象传媒

One day they (the Germans) were playing, they obviously wanted some wood. They were on manoeuvres and they wanted some wood for their fires I expect, as they were using hand grenades to blow up the pine trees. They were fallen down trees and they were blowing them up by throwing hand grenades at them. This was quite exotic as chunks of wood were flying everywhere; we were very scared about that.

As a child there was this frisson of fear, you never knew what was going to happen when a gaggle of troops came down the road.
If they were on skirmishes, they just went where they were going and if you had been in the way they would have walked all over you. Or shot you, anything could have happened. You never knew when you went home if your parents would still be there, if they were on their manoeuvres around the place. So there was always this doubt about, you didn鈥檛 want to see Germans and if you saw Germans one would probably keep out of sight, or go the other way or not be there out of preference. In actual fact, though, throughout the whole occupation I don鈥檛 think I had one to one contact with more than 9 Germans.
MALCOLM WOODLAND

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