My dad was in Berlin in 1946 

and his old friend David said that a friend of his was at the Berlin Natural History Museum. 

David wondered if he was still there.

At the time Berlin was under a foot of snow, 

the roads were covered with snow, there was scarcely anything going along them. 

You could scarcely see where the roads went.

My dad says he walked for hours 

through heaps of bomb rubble and snow 

round huge craters in the ground under walls leaning over.

Snow everywhere. Till suddenly, he came face to face with 

some enormous skeletons in the snow.

The old Berlin Natural History Museum 

had been hit by a bomb. There were dinosaur skeletons standing there in the middle of nowhere.

Great bones and skulls 

rising up out of the snow amongst heaps of broken brick 

and broken glass.

“I’ll never forget the sight of those dinosaur skeletons,” 

my dad said.

I’ve never forgotten them either – 

though I never saw them.