Forbidden Friends

Alessio Baggio

My Friend the Enemy book review
By Dan Smith

Friends come in all shapes and sizes, but can your friend be the enemy?

The year is 1942 and the location is England. Peter Dixon lives in a small rural village by the Atlantic ocean. WWII is raging in the rest of Europe and the threat of invasion by the enemy is high. Finally, the day comes when the air raid sirens start to blare. Peter looks up at the sky and sees a German bomber crashing down in a ball of flames. As Peter races towards an Anderson shelter, he spots a parachute in the blackened sky. Following the crash, Peter and his new friend Kim decide to explore the crash site in search of a souvenir. What they end up finding instead is the German that fell out of the sky. Instead of shooting the injured airman with a gun they found earlier by the wreckage, they take pity on him and decide to help him go into hiding. Soon Peter and Kim realize that the enemy they are helping is “not really any different from us”.(Smith,255)

A captivating read, I wholeheartedly recommend this book to any young person that enjoys historical fiction. Teens and tweens will enjoy it because they will be able to relate to the two young protagonists. I particularly enjoyed the story because it explores the complexities of human interactions in one of the most difficult situations you could imagine. Peter and Kim have to reconcile the fact that Nazi’s are bombing their village while Erik, the fallen airman, turns out to be a good person. In addition, the young English teens’ patriotism and love for their country is tested against their desire to help another human being even if he is the enemy. “This man was a German. He was the enemy… but, at the same time, he didn’t look very dangerous”.(Smith,75)

“My Friend the Enemy” is an important story because it reminds us of the humanity of our enemies. Young readers, in particular, will be able to identify with Peter and Kim and empathize with the difficult choices they have to make. It wasn’t their generation that decided to go to war but they had to deal with the consequences. Another theme I enjoyed in the book is that of selflessness. Peter and Kim could have turned in the soldier and become instant heroes but instead, they choose to see the humanity in the enemy and bravely help him. There is also this notion that if they help the Nazi airman maybe someone will show their relatives fighting in some far off land the same compassion. “Maybe if we look after him someone will look after Josh. Or your dad. We have to.” (Smith,77)

This book really related back to me on a personal level because my grandfather, just like Peter and Kim, collected “souvenirs” from fallen WWII aircrafts that would crash in the vicinity of his village. In 1944 when my grandfather was just 13 years old, an American B-24 Liberator crashed by his hometown of Genzano, Italy. At that time it so happened that my grandfather, Frank, was building a model boat but ran out of materials. He decided to use a piece of the downed plane to complete it. That model boat is now part of my WWII memorabilia collection and it is a constant reminder of not only the horrors of war but how something good and inspiring can arise from the ashes of wreckage and destruction.