(An English war prisoner held in a nazi internement camp is speaking)

That’s what I told myself – Well, you’re still alive. I think all of us said the same each morning when we woke up – Well, I’m still alive. But the truth is, we weren’t. What we were – it wasn’t dead, but it wasn’t alive either. I was a living soul only a few minutes a day, when I was in my bunk. Then, I tried to think of something happy, something I’d liked – but not something I loved, because that made it worse. Just a small thing, like a school picnic or bicycling downihill – that’s all I could stand.
It felt like thirty years, but it was only one.

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie, Mary Ann Shaffer