Читать книгу The Oaken Heart онлайн

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It was a dreadful picture of annihilation, of ending off, of the hopeless destruction of practically all a whole human crop. I remembered names I had not thought of for twenty-five years: George Playle and a big cowman they used to call "Long 'un." I remembered the food shortage at the boarding school I went to later, and the miserable darkness too; but the principal thing was the hundreds and hundreds of far away deaths.

Then, of course, there had been the cleaning up as one grew and the effect that had had on us all.

When we of our generation were just preparing to break the earth over our heads we found that practically the whole batch of youngsters immediately in front of us had disappeared, and naturally that meant that most of us had heavy responsibilities from the first. This in itself is not very extraordinary, but added to it there was our very odd upbringing.

Those of us who were in our 'teens when the war ended came out early, even in Auburn, into a disillusioned world wherein everything, including God, was highly suspect.