War's End

Years after the war I chronicled my experiences. This is an excerpt from my book Six Years of Darkness.

Victory Day dawned gloriously sunny. By late afternoon it seemed as though all London had converged on the West End. I'd never seen such a crowd. It was a quiet crowd. People milled around, dreamlike, watching each other. Perhaps they were hoping, as I was, that someone would go mad with joy like the people in Paris. No one did.
As the warm night deepened, six years of darkness vanished and blacked out London burst into light. Pall Mall, Westminster, Leicester and Trafalgar Square and Piccadilly Circus were flood-lit.
My mother and I wandered through the West End. When she grew tired we sat on a bench in Trafalgar Square and just watched. I leaned back and closed my eyes, unable to take in what was happening. Any moment now I would wake up to roaring planes and screaming bombs. Peace had no reality yet. Only war was real.
"You're a bloody Jerry, you are! Put your hands up!"
My eyes flew open. Next to me three little boys were playing war.
"They don't even know what peace is," my mother said.
Close to midnight we joined the thousands of people in Piccadilly Circus, the heart of London. Everybody fell silent as Big Ben began to strike twelve times. Peace would begin at 12:01. The last stroke had barely died away, when someone began to sing "There'll Always Be An England." The song thundered into the bright victory night, taken up bu a thousand voices. I sang with them, proud to have lived in such tumultuous times.
Fireworks exploded into the night, not bombs. Fireworks turned the sky red, not fires. Search lights chased each other, not enemy planes.
Suddenly it was real. This was peace.

© Copyright of content contributed to this Archive rests with the author. Find out how you can use this.