For the Duration - Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fourteen
WE WANT the KING!

I WAS GOING TO SPEND Christmas 1944 on the Sussex coast, and the knowledge of this stirred the happy anticipation always simmering in the last days of term. My father had bought a holiday bungalow at Pevensey Bay, and now this investment for better times was providing a haven away from London for my mother, for Barbara (aged seven now), and baby Monica, born earlier in the year. It was five years since I had seen the sea. I smiled inside all the way to Eastbourne, and out along the branch-line to Pevensey.
My memories of that Christmas at Pevensey Bay are of an oasis of calm: “Peace on Earth” — for our little household, at least. Flying-bombs no longer trundled regularly over this coastline, as they had in the summer. London’s rockets were temporarily forgotten. The blackout had eased to a “dimout”, and I shared in the Christmas congregation’s joy to see stained glass windows glowing richly in the old church of St Nicolas, in Pevensey.
Usually alone, and contentedly so, I pedalled for hours across the marshes and low-lying farmland, encountering scant traffic on the quiet byways. Waterfowl moved unobtrusively among the reeds, and plovers dotted waterlogged fields. They easily outnumbered human life, represented by the odd farmhand patiently hedging and ditching.
Bing Crosby’s dream almost came true in Pevensey Bay, for I saw from my window at bedtime, on Christmas Eve, a dense pattern of smudged grey specks, softly falling. They did not settle, but at least they had tried.
Since starting at Bancroft’s, I had been out of London only once previously. A month or so before D-Day, I spent a few days in Bampton. Then, Mary was as selfless and loving, and Bampton’s spell as strong, as ever. The village lads I had known at school may well have started work, for I did not see any of them.
Two land-girls were boarding at Mary’s. They were sisters, and the most effervescent, vital young ladies I had ever met. Apart from a little teasing, Betty and Monica barely noticed me: but I was very aware of them, and entranced by their vibrant presence. Their family was well-to-do, and in London we would have said that they “talked posh”. Their earthy criticism of tasks given them, and forthright abuse of the farmer who employed them, surprised and delighted me, enunciated as it all was so purely. The farmer, incidentally, was Mr. Butt, on whose land I had searched for both mushrooms and bomb fragments, earlier in the war.
I see them now, bounding into the kitchen after work, their Women’s Land Army uniforms high with smells of dairy and cowshed, their faces aglow and their eyes asparkle. Mary’s home is rejuvenated: and a fourteen-year-old schoolboy is smitten.
On that visit, I cycled all over the village — remembering, savouring, and basking in Bampton’s special warmth. That warmth will always be there for me, no matter the season. One afternoon, I headed out on the Black Bourton road, followed the outer rim of Brize Norton aerodrome, and returned to Bampton along the Station road — on a map roughly tracing a helping of pie.
I paused on the humpbacked bridge over the railway line near the station, leant my bicycle against the wall, and sat on the stonework for slightly better elevation. I knew this spot of old. Around Brize Norton, the drone of aircraft had been constant, and the bridge would be the best place from which to watch a procedure I had not seen before. The planes were towing gliders.
Regularly, they lifted from the tarmac and gained height for a leisurely circuit, in tandem. I had to look fixedly at a pair, or I would miss the crucial moment when the glider slipped its cable, and banked away — free. From the road, earlier, I had enjoyed seeing the cables snake heavily to the ground in the dropping zone on the outskirts of the aerodrome.
For a while, though, its charge gone, and with its bizarre hanging appendage, a towing plane lacked its usual grace. By contrast, a glider in free flight moved fluently through the air. As I sat on the bridge, one whooshed overhead, quite low, making little flapping sounds, and appearing much bigger than I had thought it to be.

*

Winter became spring, and the Allied armies in Germany were sandwiching the enemy in an ever-narrowing strip. Europe’s war was surely almost over. The report of President Roosevelt’s death, coming as it did so close to peace, caused especial sadness.
Far more shocking, however, was the violence of Mussolini’s sordid death, also in April. We crowded around the newspapers to gaze at those unforgettable photographs of the murdered dictator and his mistress, strung up for public display in Milan. And then, tumbling chaotically out of Berlin came the rumours and counter-rumours and distortions concerning the demise of the other dictator.
Adolf Hitler was dead, on that there was general agreement. As for details, well... Had he been shot by his henchmen, or had he taken poison? Could there have been a suicide pact between the Nazi dictator and Eva Braun, his long-time love? Had Adolf and Eva secretly married? And their bodies — had they been dowsed in spirits, and burned in an attempt to cover up tracks? Or simply buried under the rubble of a Berlin bunker? Had he, incredibly, fled to South America?
“Whistle while you work,
Mussolini is a twerp.
Hitler’s barmy — so’s his army,
Whistle while you work.”

One way and another, a great deal had happened since I had accepted this dismissive little ditty in the thirties, and the twerp and the barmy one had a lot to answer for. Now both were dead.
Momentous happenings abroad caused changes to the lives of those at home. An event can occur during a day, or in the space of an hour, or in a split-second, whereas the resultant changes tend to creep up on us. When the sirens sounded for London’s last air raid, we did not know that we should never have to take shelter from the Luftwaffe again. When the listener caught his breath involuntarily as the very last buzzbomb’s motor cut out, he did not know that it was London’s final V1. And the last rocket: no one knew when it made its crater that it was, in fact, the last V2 of the war.
At school, we often argued about V1s and V2s — which caused the greater damage, which took more lives. Both were blind, indiscriminate weapons, but some boys admitted to a greater dread of the rocket — an omnipresent Sword of Damocles overhead — while others were affected more by the drawn-out waiting; first for the doodlebug’s engine to stop, and then for the explosion. I was in the latter group. As recently as the previous month, March, such discussions were still relevant. Now they were academic.
Newspapers reported cases of unease when the blackout officially ended. After nearly six years of war, the habit was entrenched: now part of the nightly ritual was unnecessary, so some insecurity was understandable.
Scrape, scrape, scrape. We took part in the activity, cheerfully enough. Using an assortment of makeshift tools, we scraped and scratched and chipped away at our dormitory windows, laboriously trying to rid them of their coating of black paint. Perched on bed ends, and straddling window-sills, we persevered for perhaps half an hour, after which what had been novelty became sweated labour.
It was about this time that I saw the film, Henry the Fifth. I remember standing around afterwards, with friends, outside the cinema in New Cross, near the Marquis of Granby. Other groups stood in the foyer and on the pavement, apparently reluctant to leave. Their subdued mood contrasted with the animation of the queue approaching the ticket-box.
Subdued? After Olivier’s rousing performance, the derring-do, the calls to patriotism? “Cry ‘God for Harry! England and Saint George!’” Subdued?
At the moment, we could not express our enthusiasm about the production — its spectacle, vitality and splendid costuming. For now, we were silent in disbelief at what we had just seen.
The Gaumont British News cameramen had been to Belsen. The images would not fade. Stick figures. Staring eyes, deep in sockets. British soldiers, masked against disease, stacking corpses. Horror followed horror. A great mound of shoes. A heap of spectacles. Shambling skeletons. A gaunt face leering — no, he was smiling — at the camera. A walk through a hut, assorted emaciated limbs jutting from its bunks, and more of those haunted, empty stares.
“We few, we happy few, we band of brothers.” Here was a sickening irony: the valour ascribed to Crispen’s day juxtaposed with the obscenity that was Belsen.

*

Home from Bancroft’s for a few days, and at a loose end, I sat in the park overlooking our house, and the view beyond to the City. I could just make out the dome of St. Paul’s in the greyness.
The war was over. Europe’s war, at least. “Unconditional Surrender” had been foreshadowed by weeks of good news; by newspaper photographs of smiling Russian and American soldiers embracing, and dispirited columns of German troops, shuffling into captivity.
VE Day: it seemed like any other day, as I lounged back on the park bench. Behind me, past the shrubbery, St. Catherine’s depressing shell stood forlorn. Before me was the untidy site where the barrage balloon bad been moored until recently and, further along, opposite Peter Lee’s house, the tell-tale darker bitumen on the path marked part of the crater that the rocket had gouged.
Across the road, our house, in the main tired and unkempt, had a jaunty splodge of colour erupting from its top front window. A spritely feather in its cap. My father had resurrected our somewhat ostentatious Union Jack — the largest in the street — from its tomb under the stairs. He had dusted it down and polished its impressively long pole, which now poked proudly between the boards that still substituted for windowpanes. My father had bought the flag for the Silver Jubilee in 1935, and unfurled it again in 1937 at the Coronation — eight years ago almost to the day. Perhaps this was not quite “like any other day”.
It was a lively train journey that afternoon from New Cross to town, with Lorna and some of her girlfriends, all in carnival mood and ready for anything. Londoners were converging on the City and West End, to be part of VE Day. To be part of history. By the time we were rattling over the expanse of rail-tracks just out of New Cross, I knew that this day was, in fact, different.
Good-humoured crowds pressed along London’s ancient thoroughfares, and milled about its public places. Lamp standards were festooned with coloured lights, awaiting the dark, and exultant banners were draped over balconies. “It’s Over!” they proclaimed, and “PEACE”, and “V for Victory”. Flags and bunting brightened every building, and children waved their own tiny Union Jacks. Office girls, “Kiss Me Quick!” and “I’m Yours, Sailor!” on their fairground hats, linked arms and flirted with passing servicemen.
Somewhere, somehow, I was separated from Lorna and the others, but it did not matter. I made my way along the Embankment to Westminster Bridge, and back up Whitehall to Trafalgar Square. Tumult and congestion. Flag-sellers were making fortunes. Sudden bursts of singing. And cheering. Dense crowds engulfed the lions and Nelson’s Column. Skylarking and laughter. People were throwing streamers. Every face was animated, with something to smile about at last, something to celebrate.
I went with the tide through Admiralty Arch, and along the Mall to where people were massed even more thickly near the Queen Victoria Memorial, across from Buckingham Palace. Anchored on my little piece of roadway, I did what all the others packed around me were doing: I stood and waited. I stood looking up at the balcony directly ahead, and waited. I was not very tall, and it was warm in the crush, peering over shoulders and waiting for something to happen. When those around me swelled the chanting which broke out sporadically — “We want the King! We want the King!” — I joined in. Safely anonymous, I overcame my self-consciousness and joined in: “We want the King!”
We got him, of course. One by one, the Royal Family came onto that balcony, and stood in line, acknowledging the cheers, the forest of waving hands and flags, the joy and thanksgiving spread out before them. The King saluted. The Queen and the Queen Mother waved, and smiled, as did Elizabeth and Margaret, more excitedly. And then, although this had not seemed possible, the crowd’s roar intensified. Churchill stood there, too, on the balcony. He waved; he beamed; and — in classic pose — he raised his fingers, giving the V for Victory.
Those few minutes, with Winston beside the Royal Family, accepting the people’s affection — adulation, perhaps — stand out in my memories of the celebrations held in London that marked the end of the war. VJ Day was still to come, when Japan surrendered, in August. And the following summer, on a special day, more measured celebrations, with parades, were held, remembering all who had served and endured, honouring the dead, and giving thanks for victory. VE Day affected me most strongly, however, particularly the spontaneous tribute that London paid to “Winnie”. That may have been Churchill’s “finest hour”.

*

I became friends with Rendall and Bugbee during my School Certificate year. They were boarders a year junior to me, and together we decided that a cycling tour would be worth undertaking in the summer holidays. Unlike the pipedreams so often shared at school, this scheme materialised.
We were granted special permission to travel from school into the City one Saturday afternoon, to join the Y.H.A. Using our colourful new map with its little red triangles showing hostels, and our projected route — roughly triangular, London to South Wales, north to Snowdonia, and diagonally home again — we worked out each day’s run. Anticipated adventure leaped from the place-names, as we crowded over the map on the bench in the cluttered Y.H.A. shop-cum-office. Cleeve Hill... Llandrindod Wells... Cae Dafydd...
Cycle punctures are easily mended, and tired young muscles soon recuperate. We pedalled off each morning, full of youth’s confidence and vitality. The road ahead, the freedom, the feeling of accomplishment, and the fellowship in the hostels: we revelled in it all. At night, too, we supported one another in the small dormitories, as we exaggerated and romanticised tales of Bancroft’s.
There were plenty of “firsts” on the tour. None of us had holidayed independently before, leaving grown-ups at home, nor had we visited these regions. I swam in the sea for the first time. It was at Tremadoc, in North Wales, and I was glad that Rendall was anchored to some rocks as a tidal rip swept me up to him, and he was able to grab my arm. We laughed about it, but I had been scared. We climbed our first mountain, too, a very satisfying full day’s walk from the hostel at Cae Dafydd. We were proud of that achievement: the highest peak in England and Wales.
Triumphantly, and on schedule, we arrived at Bugbee’s home in Potters Bar, to spend a last night together before Rendall and I cycled off in the morning for our homes in south-east London.

*

Hiroshima... Nagasaki... No sooner was I back home from Wales — down to earth — than everyone was talking about mushroom clouds, and a new wonder-weapon, the Atomic Bomb. The Pacific war, the dour campaign that was slowly pushing the Japanese from the islands which they had earlier over-run, suddenly ended. On the 14th August, Japan surrendered, and World War Two was over.
It was at last — to use the phrase unfortunately chosen by Neville Chamberlain — peace in our time.

THE END

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