Recollections of My Childhood and Youth

Recollections of My Childhood and Youth lists, among others, the sections Discovering the World, Boyhood's Years and Transitional Years in its contents. The writer recalls that at six years old he heard the word war for the first time and did not know what it was. One of the writer’s aunts says that war means that the Germans have put police in Schleswig and forbidden the Danes to go there, and that they will beat them if they stay there.

The writer says soldiers were beautiful, gay-coloured men with shakos who marched in step to the sound of drums and fifes, while police went by themselves, without music, and looked stern and threatening. The writer says that he was admitted and asked to wait in a room, through the glass doors of which the lady’s adopted children attentively observed him for some time. The writer says that the narrative did not make the slightest impression upon either Maria or Filomena, and that he asked Filomena if she did not think it was very remarkable.