大象传媒

Of course one thing the Germans did was to mine the cliffs and all the beaches. The cliffs where I lived along Petit Bot, the Corbiere and the Gouffre, had barbed wire to prevent people going onto the cliffs, although it wasn鈥檛 a very good effort because there were only strands of barbed wire and you could easily get in between if you wished. Although there were large signs that the Germans erected saying 鈥楢chtung Minen!鈥�.

One day I was going along there and there were these two young boys walking along the path ahead of me. Suddenly they slipped through the barbed wire into the minefield. And I thought 鈥淕ood heavens, what鈥檚 going to happen here?鈥�, so I went along quickly and tried to coax them out, I thought I better not go into the minefield myself, but I tried to coax them out. They were walking through the gorse and so on, and I had a view for a minute and the next in the gorse, and every time they came into view I would say 鈥淐ome on, come out of there for goodness sake鈥�, and I think I threatened them in the end that I would hit them if they didn鈥檛 come out. I think that seemed to do the trick because finally they did come out, and I can tell you it was a great relief because any minute I was expecting a mine to explode and I probably would have been caught up in it! After that I told their parents about what they had done, and hope they told them not to go in there again. Anyway they are still both alive today so I assume they didn鈥檛 go in there again. But that was a frightening moment for a while.
FRED GALLIENNE

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