大象传媒

This story has been contributed to the People's War by the 大象传媒 Learning Centre, Gloucester, on behalf of Hazel Browne with her permission.

I was lucky to live on the outskirts of Derby during and after World War Two and escaped the heavy bombing which many other people suffered. I was able togo out and about in an almost normal manner.

In about 1942 when I was 16 years of age, I decided to take my six-year-old sister to collect wild flowers on some rough land on the age of a sewage farm, close to a factory. Many unusual plants grew there and we were happy to have quite a bunch to take home and identify and arrange for display.

Suddenly we came upon a group of men tending a row of vegetables. By their uniforms the men were instantly recognisable as Germans, the first I had ever seen. They worked in military fashion, even bending over in unison to pull out the weeds. I was very frightened of them, but thought there must be a British officer in charge. Glancing across, however, I was horrified to see a GERMAN captain was walking up and down, supervising them.

All the men were casting discreet looks in our direction. Looking back, I realise we must have made a pleasant picture of humanity with the bunches of flowers we were holding. At the time, they were the enemy and I thought they ought not to be allowed out. Now I understand that prisoners of war had to grow their own vegetables whenever possible. We of that generation remember the struggle to feed outselves and perhaps the prisoners were gald to be out of their camps for a short time.

Eventually, when the war was drawing to a close, the authorities decided to allow German prisoners out on Christmas Day, providing they had an invitation from a British family!

As it happened, my uncle was in hospital and I cycled to visit him on December 25th. On the way home I saw a group of PoWs walking along the road. I guessed they were going to visit a kind family for Christmas. I plucked up my courage and threw them an apple from the basket on the front of my bike and shouted 'Happy Christmas' while cycling at full speed. I was frightened of them even then. Hands stretched up to catch the apple. How inadequate the gift of one apple was, but perhaps the thought was a greater gift.

When I was 21, and the war in Europe was slowly ending, two older friends from the Methodist Church asked me if I would visit them one afternoon. They were entertaining several German men who had been prisoners for some years but were now allowed limited freedom.

"I don't think I can do that," was my immediate reaction. I was eventually persuaded that the time had come for friendship and one afternoon found me surrounded by a group of young men, all smiling and willing to practise their English. One, from Berlin, talked a lot and drew
From his pocket photographs of his family. Others nudged a man who was smiling shyly. "It's his 21st birthday," they said.
I searched my handbag, but the only thing I could find as an impromptu present was a 'polyphoto' which I passed to him, wishing him a happy birthday.

The group met often in this British home, to have tea, relax, and talk. One by one, however, they were returned to Germany.

Forty-seven years later, after the Berlin Wall had fallen, a letter came addressed to me from Germany. It was written by the young man who had celebrated his birthday in England with a cup of tea in his hand and a tiny photograph of myself in his pocket. He was now a grandfather, wrote to me of his life and asked about my life during the intervening years. He had obtained my address from the English Methodist minister.

Our two families eventually met, with great joy, in the former East German section of Berlin in November 1994. He still had the photograph of me, five years after the Berlin Wall came down and 50 years after the end of the war in Europe.

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