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This story was submitted to the People's War web site by Sutton Coldfield Library on behalf of Mrs Kathleen Miles and has been added to the site with her permission. the author fully understands the sites terms and conditions.

This is the continuation of part 1 of "A long Friendship" and was written in 1995.

When Frau Schellhass was 80 she came alone to stay with us in Sutton Coldfield and was the most delightful pro-English visitor anyone could have. We took her up to Lincoln to meet my parents for the first time – this shortly before my parents died – and she would talk late into the night about her feelings about the Nazis and how she and her husband had not been able in those days to express their fears even to their children. We heard of the sadness of losing one son in the Russian fighting and the awful story of the the other one held as a Russian prisoner and only released to find his own way back to his home long after the war ended arriving with ruined health and as a virtual tramp.

We met Frau Schellhass several more times in Germany, and when we last saw her aged 99 in an old people’s home she was almost blind and recited to us a verse of English poetry about a prisoner who could only sense the changing seasons of the year through the bars of his small cell window. A wonderful brain, and a wonderful lady who always loved England and who died aged 100 in Bremen three years ago. I was very privileged to know her. Our three children have been to Germany at various times and we hope our grandchildren will carry on the connection as the years go by.

For the past few years we have gone to stay with Richard and Lotte in Bremen in the years they haven’t been to stay with us in Sutton Coldfield. These exchanges came to a high peak last year when they came to our Golden Wedding celebrations and Lotte stood up and read out a wonderful speech which she had written about our family’s friendship over 58 years! Some record for a pen friendship chosen by a teacher in a Cleethorpes grammar school in 1936! It is a story of a happy relationship between England and Germany and we have been two lucky couples who still have our partners after all these years.

Last year our German friends came with us to Devon which they loved, and the year before that we all went to Berlin – an interesting experience especially for my husband who had been there at the end of the war. This September we hope to be all going to Rotenburg in Southern Germany, and as we are all now well into our seventies and not as fit as we were, I think we shall plan any future trips according to our health!

There is one more sequel to this story. This year our younger daughter who has cancer went to Hamburg to stay with Lotte’s daughter Julie who is a Doctor specialising in complementary medicine. Julie is trying to help Mandy in her fight to overcome this dreadful disease. Now the chemotherapy and radiotherapy are over, Mandy will rely on any treatment Julie can give, so our two families are firmly linked, (1995). If success can come in Mandy’s fight against cancer , how delighted we will all be.

The celebrations this year mean many things to many people in England and Germany, but to people like us who lived through those long war years when our youth went by in dark clouds with just odd bright shafts of sunshine giving us hopes of better times, it means much more than younger people can realise.

Never mind Major and Kohl, Trautmann and Klinsmann, what about Miles and Barth (Lotte’s married name) and their uncomplicated friendship lasting 58 years! There can’t be too many of us still about now!

(To be continued.......)

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