It was a time of anxiety and danger; and for our captive, of hardship and distress. During a lull in the pursuit, we woke up among the rocks just as … - Patrick Leigh Fermor

Germany! . . . I could hardly believe I was there. For someone born in the second year of World War I, those three syllables were heavily charged. Even as I trudged across it, early subconscious notions, when one first confused Germans with germs and knew that both were bad, still sent up fumes; fumes, moreover, which the ensuing years had expanded into clouds as dark and baleful as the Ruhr smoke along the horizon and still potent enough to unloose over the landscape a mood of - what? Something too evasive to be captured and broken down in a hurry.

[the sale of his two trunks from the Harrods Depository] 'still aches sometimes, like an old wound in wet weather'

A propos of Dr Oblivion, did I ever send you my first hint of untimely forgetfulness? One is at sea, and at the same instant that one forgets something, a German submarine with a skull-and-crossbones flag surfaces, and fires a shot across one's bows. Then the lid of the conning-tower opens and the top of an admiral, with monocle and fencing scars, sticks out smiling, salutes and says, `Gut morning! That is just a sighting shot. I am Admiral von Alzheimer. Ve vill meet again!', salutes, and sinks ...