We crossed over from Newhaven to Dieppe. Dieppe looked totally miserable. It had been of course occupied at least twice, probably three times, first by the Germans, then by the British and Allied forces, and all through the northern parts of France it did look very poor and battered around. But that was as nothing compared to Germany.

My station was at Darmstadt, at the Technische Hochschule in Darmstadt, which is between Frankfurt and Heidelberg, towards the south of Germany. And to be frank about it, the place was totally devastated. Darmstadt is quite a large city, and for one-and-a-half or two kilometres from the centre in all directions there wasn’t a single building that was unaffected. Most were totally bombed – craters, just shells – or badly damaged, and it was really a very sobering experience to go there. And what was even more sobering was that the German student club that I’d been put in touch with, called the Wildenburgers, made me and a fellow Cambridge student members, and looked after us well. They were generous to a point, they saw that we had everything that we needed. And I then went into the lab, of course, and actually learnt X-ray crystal diffraction work there; I was taught that as a useful way of learning German in a scientific environment.