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The theme is a long friendship and a short life.

I first met Bruno when we started together at a new school in 1936. His classical good looks bore witness to his Italian forbears. It was perhaps inevitable that he would be a front-runner in the popularity stakes. Almost immediately, there seemed to be common ground between us. In the years that followed we became very good, and occasionally inseparable friends.

Quite independently, we both joined the school boxing club, where one of our role models was Buster Merryfield (Uncle Albert of Only Fools and Horses), a schoolboy Great Britain boxing champion. Bruno invariably beat me, but that was attributable to no more than a respective weight and age advantage of half a pound and six weeks. Even so, he could never compete with me in aggressive demeanour and fearsome visage. In that respect, I was all form and no substance.

At the outbreak of war we were evacuated to Godalming. In June 1940, as soon as school certificate exams were over, we set off daily to Peperharrow Park. There, under the guidance and inspirational vocal encouragement Dr Nichols our history master, we dug trenches. They were to be the second line of defence of the then realistic threat of a German invasion. Dr Nichols, who had been decorated for gallantry in the First World War, possessed a sharp wit and enduring twinkle in his eye and was totally lacking in hubris and pomposity. Otherwise he might easily have doubled for Captain Mainwaring in Dad’s Army.

In the summer holiday which followed, Bruno and I worked in partnership at the nearby Mason’s Farm. There we picked potatoes, learnt to herd cattle, to stoke sheaves of wheat, to make haystacks and, in the interests of personal hygiene to keep on our feet while spreading muck from a rickety old horse-drawn dung-cart.

By the end of the holiday we had, as fifteen-year-olds, all but ventured into manhood. We had smoked Capstan full strength, purchased our first pipes and puffed away at ‘Black Beauty’ shag. We even tried chewing tobacco, but decided that the meagre sweet ration was kinder to our taste buds.

On the last weekend of the holiday, Bruno went home to Battersea. Early in the following week Mr Band, the Latin master told us that Bruno had been injured in a bombing raid. I remember being so full of disbelief that I could scarcely stifle a chuckle. To me, Bruno had always seemed indestructible. The next day, the Headmaster made a formal announcement. A short life and a long friendship had come to an end.

In November last year I paid a rare visit to Battersea. I glanced down Illminster Gardens behind Alders’ department store. There was a gap in a row of elegant Edwardian houses. Bruno’s home had been replaced by a small block of 1950’s maisonettes. I felt a twinge of emotion.

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