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THE GERMANS ARRIVE

After getting home, we knew then that the Germans were coming, and there was no more boats. So we had to stay. And my mother, she was so frightened when the Germans were coming, and she knew they would be coming, and when they arrived she wouldn’t go out for a long time. She was about five or six weeks before she went out. Because, you know, before the war, we never knew, we never read the same, I suppose, and we never realised that these Germans, which … I can remember my mother calling them ‘squares’, and my father, because at the time of the war, they weren’t a nation to be liked. We thought there was going to be a lot of bloodshed. But, of course, when they did come, she stayed in, but then eventually went out, and there they were: very tall, very big and broad to us children, because … we were a bit frightened, because they all had guns, and they had bayonets, and they were strolling our streets. And around our roads they always seemed to be busy, I suppose because they were taking over a lot of the houses and the hotels nearby. So there was a lot of concern at the time, what was going to happen.
MOLLY BIHET

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