We may allow ourselves a brief period of rejoicing, but let us not forget for a moment the toil and efforts that lie ahead – Winston Churchill.
Tuesday, May 8 th 1945, was an ordinary day. I was seven years old, and the only special event was that we had an egg for breakfast, a real egg, not dried egg powder, which came in
packets from America. When the newspaper dropped through the letterbox, mother picked it up.
‘The war is over,’ she cried, waving the paper high above her head. She rushed out into the street. ‘It’s over, the war is over,’ she shouted gleefully to an empty road. She gave me a hug and a kiss. ‘The war is over, it’s peacetime now.’
I have no memories of ‘before the war.’ Mine was a wartime childhood, and my vision of peace was limited, expecting the sweet shops to be full. Whenever I asked for something, more food, toys, or sweets, the answer was always—no, doncha know there’s a war on. Yes, I knew something of the war, but now, I still could not have what I wanted in its absence.
That night, with my parents, sister and maternal grandparents, I went to a piece of wasteland behind a row of shops. A pile of wood, old furniture, including an armchair, surmounted by an effigy of Hitler, was set alight. Someone gave me a piece of parkin to eat, and as it got dark, fireworks began. The fireworks were magical. I had never seen them before: sparkling, fizzing lights of many colours, whizzing Catherine wheels, popping Roman Candles sending burning balls into the air, and then rockets hissing into the night sky. I wasn’t sure about the bangers and crackerjacks.
In the following days, people strung bunting from roofs, lampposts, trees and telegraph poles. Any flag or piece of coloured material would serve. Whitewashed messages appeared on walls, large Vs, and Welcome home Tom, Dick or Harry, and the morse code for V … – which we were familiar with as it preceded messages sent to the French resistance by the BBC. Some houses were plain. Their Tom Dick or Harry would not be coming home.
Now What?
We won the war. Now what? Nothing changed. Food remained scarce; no extra goods appeared in the shops until one memorable day when every child had a banana. We had never seen these curved yellow things before. I ate mine, but it was no big deal. Why all the fuss?
Bananas represented the beginning of the good times for the adults, but they didn’t come.
My city, Sheffield, was still a pile of rubble. Mother pointed to a smoke-blackened building and explained that she used to take me there for afternoon tea. After ten years, it was
rebuilt into the fashionable store of former times. The city is now restored, but if you know where to look, there are still scars of the Blitz.
In July that year, Mr Churchill, who had seen us through the hostilities was deposed as prime minister. I thought that was most unfair compounded by the new government confiscating father’s haulage business when road transport was nationalized. Adding to my confusion was the arrival of a German lady to stay with us. She and her husband had a business arrangement with my father before the war, but had returned to Germany when war was declared. They were jews, and the husband perished in a concentration camp. She was asked not to tell me the details. She survived, I learned later, by being a beautiful young woman and the indispensable secretary of a German top brass.
How could she, from a defeated nation, arrive in austere Britain in a fur coat, with jewellery a-jangle, bearing wonderful gifts for my sister and me, including a box of chocolates? My mother received a cherished print of reeds by a river. It still hangs in my sister’s flat.
Another confusing change was the arrival of young men straight from shooting up Nazis, into a classroom of 50 children. One teacher, who must have been a sergeant-major, used his
ruler, applied forcefully to my knuckles, to facilitate my ability to do arithmetic. Other teachers were more popular. One taught us about tank warfare in the desert, and another
explained the intricacies of dead reckoning navigation of a Sunderland flying boat hunting submarines over the featureless Atlantic. The price of this useful knowledge was failure in a French exam.
Overall, there was a sense of relief rather than jubilation. A sense that we had done it, but at terrible cost; a determination that it mustn’t happen again. The jingoism came later. The mood was captured in Edmund Blunden’s victory poem:-
A widening wonder glitters our view,
That tyranny’s over, past; once more we have come through.
My father told me how he ran to the main road at the end of his street to witness the return of street lighting. Expecting the area to be floodlit, he was somewhat unimpressed at the 40-watt bulb that came on!
I, too, wondered about street lighting. Why put in all these nice bulbs? They would have to be taken out again when the next war started.
Brilliant article Mike. Thank you. Real first-hand experience. I have no memory of the war having been born in 1944. However, allegedly, at the age of six months I was counting the Luftwaffe – six German aeroplanes – flying overhead. My mother thought I was going to be a genius – What a disappointment! I think I should have been in the Anderson shelter at the bottom of the garden.
I do remember the best way to get out of learning French was to get the teacher to reminisce on his battles with the Nazis – which he did with great enthusiasm! I too failed French!