re:mote voices

How do you say to your child, I am sending you away, because enemy bombs may fall out of the sky, because the streets of the city may burn like forest fires of brick and timber, but I myself am staying here, in what I believe may be daily danger of burning, burying alive, gas, and ultimately perhaps a grey army rolling in on tanks over the suburbs, or sailing its submarines up our river, all guns blazing?

- The Thing in the Forest - Little Black Book of Stories - A.S. Byatt - an extract from one of the short stories in byatt's collection "little black book of stories". i've not read any byatt, but have noticed this collection. this extract covers the strangeness of evacuating children during the war, the sense of bafflement and new found companionship.