WHEN September came, the summer retreated behind dark, corpulent skies. Most days were overcast or foggy with pockets of rain. On many nights, water spattered against my bedroom window and thunder barked from low-hanging clouds.

Across town during those evenings, Friede kept her mother awake until the early morning hours. Every aspect, detail and outcome of our wedding ceremony and reception was plotted by Friede and her mother.

Friede believed our union was going to put an end to any questions about her and her mother’s illegitimate start in this world. She wanted our marriage to extinguish the stigma of being a bastard. Finally, all the shame and humiliation Friede had endured as a child and teenager would vanish by the marriage registrar’s signature.

Maria Edelmann cautioned her daughter that the walk to the altar was a long road. It was best to be mindful of the dangers that lay ahead. Friede’s mother was a keen observer and victim of life’s cruelties, punishments and trials of patience. Maria knew that unhappiness was often a visitor who called on those who demanded a different destiny than they were allotted at birth.

Friede dismissed her mother’s prescience to me as widow’s envy. “Mutti is just nervous for me because men were happy to share her bed but never her life.’

It was mid-September when the group captain’s adjutant, Flight Lieutenant Locke, informed me that Friede’s medical examination was to take place at Wandsbek hospital in Hamburg.

I asked her if she would be all right going alone. Friede laughed and asked, “What can they possibly do to me? German doctors have examined me before without any problems.”

Unfortunately, Friede had never experienced the cold hands of a disgruntled British army doctor. From the moment she entered the hospital, Friede was treated like livestock with possible foot and mouth infection. Her reception wasn’t surprising, considering the hospital wing was designated for British personnel; a German who was neither a cleaner nor a cook in that section of the hospital was regarded as something close to a contagion.

The admitting nurse, fearing that her comprehension of English was insufficient, yelled instructions at Friede, following a simple rule that our island had employed for centuries: English was best digested by foreigners in a blustering tone.

Friede was rewarded with less dignity and more intrusiveness than a new recruit would receive during an RAF medical inspection. They took her to a cold room in the hospital’s basement, where she was interrogated by an obese GP from Putney. He noted on Friede’s medical files her age, her hair and eye colour, that she had all her teeth. In between chain-smoking cigarettes, the doctor asked about her family’s medical history. Were there any idiots or enfeebled relatives, any genetic defects from madness to mental retardation in her background?

Friede answered his questions with a polite yes or no. She wanted no shade of doubt to colour his assessment. The doctor continued his questions and discovered that Friede was illegitimate. He told her that it was his opinion that Germany was a country loose in morals.

After the oral interview was complete, the fat GP from Putney ordered Friede to disrobe. A matron who must have learned her nursing skills in Broadmoor prison assisted him in the examination. Friede was probed like she was the Elephant Man. She was palpated, weighed and measured while the doctor coughed phlegmily. Blood samples were taken, followed by urine and stool samples. Friede was X-rayed and inspected for TB.

Her day ended with a painful and humiliating rough inspection of her sexual organs. During the gynaecological examination, the overweight doctor quizzed Friede about her sexual encounters. He asked her when she became sexually active. He asked her how many sexual partners she had had in her life. Mortified, she told the doctor that it was irrelevant as it was evident that she was healthy and free of any disease.

The GP insisted on the necessity of compliance. It was impossible otherwise for him to complete the examination or for her to be allowed to marry. Defeated, she answered each question in a monotone voice and her responses were written down by the assisting matron.

When the ordeal was over, Friede related to me that she didn’t know what the doctor disliked most: women, sex, or just Germans. Friede told me that when the medical inquisition ended, the physician bestowed upon her one last insult. He bade her goodbye while he lit a cigarette from the dying embers of his last one and said, “Not for me to say, but I think it is just bloody wrong for you to be allowed to marry one of our kind. Your lot are nothing but bloody nazis. Good day, madam.”

Friede left the hospital and returned home where she cried in her mother’s arms, declaring “It was just horrible, unspeakable and barbaric.”

The results from her medical examination were sent to RAF HQ Germany, where they remained for weeks. Finally, a clerk dispatched them by sea to a nondescript office in London. There, an unknown cipher would decide whether Friede was chaste and healthy enough to marry the son of a coal miner.

While we waited nervously for the results of Friede’s examination, the first stage of the Nuremberg war crime trials concluded. The outcome wasn’t surprising, considering the overwhelming evidence against the accused. The nazi architects who orchestrated the war, the Holocaust and the systematic looting of the occupied countries were found guilty.

Out of the 21 defendants in history’s first trial for crimes against humanity, 11 were condemned to death.

“Hang them quickly,” I thought, “it’s time to get on with it and be done with this evil past.” Around camp, there was little talk about a former foreign minister and some field marshals who sat uncomfortably in their cells awaiting the hangman’s call. It was beyond our rank or our comprehension of evil to offer any opinion other than: “’anging’s too good fer ’em.

Drop those dirty nazi bastards into the sea from a Lanc and let ’em sink.”

As for me, I spent no great energy reflecting on their guilt or their specious claims that they were just following orders. I was more apprehensive about Friede’s medical reports. I wanted the results as quickly as possible so we might proceed with our wedding plans. As the condemned in Nuremberg no doubt wished to slow down time, Friede and I wanted it to fly furiously towards our future together.

Time, however, passed as it should, one second after the other, one hour after the other, until each man or woman’s fate was revealed.

• Love Among The Ruins is published by Icon Books, price ££8.99