大象传媒

It was Christmas morning 1943, and my present was a second-hand Humber bike - with a basket in front. They were quite the thing to have in those days. Mother filled the basket with a huge bag of toffees. And so I took it out for a ride, came down Saunton Hill, just as the German prisoners, who were being kept at what was the Saunton Golf Club, were being marched down. So I stopped the bike took out my bag of toffees, and they all stopped, and I gave them all a toffee, and wished them a Happy Christmas. One of them said Merry Christmas back to me in German, and he was crying - and that always stuck in my mind. Twenty years later - I had two chidlren of my own -I went to visit my mother-in-law in the farm in Croyde. I picked up one of her coppies of Woman's Weekly and the star letter was from a lady who said her husband would always remember, as a prisoner of war in Saunton, on Christmas Day a little fair haired girl stopped her bike, gave them some sweets and wished them Happy Christmas. And I knew I was that girl and that was lovely. It turned out he had been moived to Oxfordshire, and had met an English girl - they married and every Christmas morning he talked about that little fair haired girl, and how she wasn't affraid. And I'm always glad I stopped, I am always so glad I stopped.

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