It started as a low humming. Lights crisscrossing over London's night sky. Then, it came. The whistle of a projectile plummeted at high speed. 

Sirens became wailing warnings far too late. Bursts of amber gloomily lit the skyline. The crackle of fire and roaring of engines drowned by the desperate panicked screams of people fleeing for cover overtook it all. 

Fanned by the wind whipping across the Thames, Camden was ablaze within seconds. The old brick buildings tried to stand firm even when their ceilings were concave, and flames burst like beasts from their opening. 

The wooden window frames turned black, glass appearing impregnated seconds before exploding and raining down on those trying to seek shelter. 

The policeman blew whistles and used flashlights to try and direct people to safety.

Volunteer firefighters, assisted by brave civilians, filled water buckets and tossed them at the spreading fires. The water sizzled and hissed to condensation. Defeated by the heat and its purpose obsolete almost, they continued. 

The people of Camden were divided into those desperate to live and those refusing to give up in the face of their enemies. 

Children cried and screamed beside their mothers. They were buried beneath brick and stone, unable to escape the impact of a falling bomb but blessed with enough time to push their child out of harm's way, leaving them alone in the horrors of war-torn London.

Carmen watched it all. Stunned into inaction. Unable to process everything but harrowingly aware of every second as it unfolded. 

Life flickered, and death thrived. Homes were torn apart, families destroyed, hearts broken, and courage tested; Carmen had never seen the true spectrum of humanity until that night. 

A night of turning tricks for a few extra ration cards was all Carmen left the house for, and now, as her black and sooty hands clutched two ration cards, sweating from the unnatural heat of the evening, Carmen had nothing. 

No house. No mother. No brothers or sisters. Not even Lacy, the border terrier, came yapping to the door to greet Carmen.

A torn door was hanging by a single hinge within a charred frame. The rest was rubble and smoke: cinder and dust. 

And, within a heartbeat, before Carmen could surpass her shock and shed a tear, she was packed on a train with a cardboard label branding her an orphan to Wales to live with a family she didn't know and who didn't want Carmen.

She was leaving behind Camden town, her home, and her childhood. 

Carmen was no longer a child. Exposed to the horrors of war and what it meant, Carmen was forced to be a woman. To see the world for what it was and how cruel it could be. 

It was how Carmen found it—running through the valleys, splashing through the streams, crashing through the forest until she could not run anymore. 

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No air was left in her lungs; she tasted the burning. It reminded Carmen of where she came from, how she came to be at the dead-end of nowhere on a mountainside in Wales. 

Collapsing beside a chain-link fence that looked so out of place within the greenery of Denbighshire. 

Eyes closed, body tingling and burning from the lack of oxygen, Carmen lay in a daze, thinking the indistinct voice was a distant memory of her last hours in Camden. 

Perhaps the shock of cold water was more than clue enough that Carmen was wrong, but even as it washed over her skin and she jumped to her feet, Carmen remained convinced it was but a memory. 

That was until they spoke again, in that horrendous attempt of English marred by W's pronounced like V's and V's like F's. 

They tried communicating with Carmen, asking if she was alright; their sparsely given water ration was wasted being used on Carmen, and all she did was spit in the man's face as a show of gratitude. 

It was the uniform—the ugly, vile grey. The horrid black cross rimmed in white—the sharp S's on his shoulder and collar. 

A Nazi soldier. A cretin. An abysmal sack of flesh-wasting air. 

Carmen couldn't be sure what or how many vile things she spewed at the man who stood unmoved behind the chain-link fence and let her exercise all her anger, grief and mourning upon him. Carmen was sure that when the tears came, and she took off running, she would feel alive, free, and unburdened for the first time in two years. 

A whole month passed, and Carmen was curious about the man behind a chain-link fence in the uniform of a Nazi. 

There were rumours in the village of a prisoner of war camp up on the mountainside. In the dip just before the meadows opened onto the sea, but until that afternoon, no one had been up there to see it for themselves. 

Now, retracing her steps, Carmen thought she wouldn't find it again. 

But as the trees thinned and opened up to long grass swaying in the summer breeze, Carmen found the chain-link fence and leaning with his back to Carmen, a man in the grey uniform stood out among the greenery.

Carmen wasn't even sure what she wanted to achieve. Whether to revive her unspoken hatred again or to apologise. To say anything or nothing. To stay or leave. 

It was, however, as Carmen tried to make up her mind that it was decided for her when a gentle and deep voice ended the symphony of wind through the trees and grass, and, with no ill will or anger or even a slither of grievances, the man behind the chain link fence said: "Guten morgen, Fraulein." 

Carmen couldn't speak the language, she didn't understand it at all, but it sounded so soft and endearing at that moment. Warm and wanted even a little bit of human kindness. 

Carmen had forgotten almost what it felt like to be that naive and childlike, to see and want the world and its inhabitants to be kind and gentle, and it shocked her to her deepest being. She stood overcome with a sense of understanding of the man trapped so far from home and wanting only one person, just one, to show him a little kindness. 

Was he deserving?

Did he not have crimes to pay for, for the endless ongoing deaths caused by a war he supported? 

Isn't he a monster? 

He is a monster! 

Is he a monster? 

Is he? 

Monster! 

Is he?! 

Carmen covered her ears, trying to blot out the voices in her head, arguing that the man did not deserve any kindness, only for another to question if he was so terrible as the government would have everyone believe. 

It went on and on and on and then stopped. 

There were no battling voices. There was nothing. Not a sound. Only a sense of curiosity and desire to know the truth about the man for herself. To make up her own mind. 

So, Carmen uncovered her ears and eyes and looked at the man. Honestly looked at him. At how he stood, almost trembling like he was in deep pain birthed from a physical affliction. But, in his hundred-mile stare, with eyes as light as the streams Carmen ran through, pain danced with hope as he met Carmen's staring. 

If he was a monster in the guise of a man, Carmen wanted to know it for herself. 

So, that morning, Carmen made her choice. 

She would find out if this man was a monster. 

"Good morning."