大象传媒

I do not remember wars. I remember air raid shelters but I do not remember wars. I had a cousin called Basil who was shot down out of the sky over Germany and killed in those years. I never knew my cousin, Basil. He was a photograph of a good looking young man in a Royal Air Force uniform. He was twenty two. There was a water tank in the street where I lived and sometimes we would see a barrage balloon tethered in the sky over the gymnasium. The gymnasium was at the end of the street. White concrete and red brick. It would shine vividly in the sunlight. In those years the sun always seemed to shine. I do not remember any rain but it must have rained. There was an air raid shelter in our back garden and many nights we would have to crawl in there. I remember my mother comforting me when I needed no comfort. She was afraid we would be blown to bits. I had no knowledge of war and was not afraid. There were noises in the sky and frightened faces in the candlelight. This shelter was shared with neighbours. One night my father was late getting into the shelter. He lay in the passage of the house on a floor which vibrated. Some of the ceiling fell down. The Luftwaffe killed a family at the end of the street by dropping a bomb directly on their house. Had the pilot walked through the front door of the house armed with a pistol, I doubt he would have killed the family. Another time my father was riding home on his bicycle when some enemy aircraft came in low over the city strafing the streets. Bullets ripped up the tarmac behind his bicycle. He jumped off and took refuge in a shop doorway. There are either no heros or we are all heros. How can we be sure of our courage? My father was a policeman. He met many German prisoners of war. He did not hate them. Once he watched a Luftwaffe officer rolling in the mud and screaming in the falling rain on the common land by the sea. The officer had been shot down out of the sky and into the sea. He was then rescued from the sea and taken prisoner. He was screaming because he objected to being accommodated with enlisted men. He was an aristocrat. My father did not hate him. My father might have been killed many times in those years but he was not.

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