16th April, the news came that the Western Allies had stopped their air attacks on Germany. It was a moment of relief, for now. Back then, I was working as a war correspondent for the BBC. As an Anglo-Indian, I could communicate with the Nazis in English. Actually, I was living in their camp. It was quite brave, if you consider I was half-British and half-Indian during WW2, but the Nazis had promised they wouldn't harm us. I had been with the Nazis since 1943, but the sheer confidence and arrogance of superiority was now gone, replaced by panic and disbelief.

There was a colonel who had moved with his family because of fear for their safety. That colonel never lost his arrogance and used to lift up his fellow army lads by saying, "It's better to die like a lion than fear like a rat." This used to lift the spirits of the lads. But among them was a 19-year-old boy. He never smiled...