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One thing, of course, that was brought home to me, soon after the Germans arrived was the fact that I’d lost many of my school friends, because it seemed to me, ninety-five percent at least of the children of school age were evacuated. I was at the Boys’ Intermediate School at the time, and all my friends were evacuated. In the Forest parish, where I lived, there were only two boys of the same age. So I only had one friend the same age as me, whom I hadn’t met before, but we got to be very good friends. We had to be really because there was no one else for me to play with! And no, we didn’t bother with girls in those days!

So that’s the thing, that’s the first thing that I really felt. Losing your friends, and you didn’t know for how long; as it turned out it was for five years. And the thing is, that after five years when they finally came back they seemed to be different people. We’d lost that interest in each other that we’d had before, so we had to make new friends all over again.
FRED GALLIENNE

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