大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People's War site by a volunteer from S.Glos. Library Service on behalf of Herbert Bowden and has been added to the site with his permission. Mr Bowden fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

"Dear Mum and Dad

Well that's another good job done and it is all over. It hardly seems possible of course and where we are we hardly notice the difference. Work goes on just the same except that things are much quieter.
Yesterday, on the roadside, we heard Churchill's speech over the radio in very different circumstances to people back at home. There were only about 40 of us listening yet to us it was just as impressive as it must have been back at home with all the flags and ceremony. The fellows all stood round, tired, dirty and oil stained, to hear those words they had waited so long for.
To most of us, as the Prime Minister was speaking, our minds went back to Dunkirk, to the years of hard work and training for this job over here and especially to that day when we landed on that sandy beach in Normandy.
We thought to of our pals we had left behind with just a little wooden cross to mark where they lay and we wished they were here with us now listening to these historic words. Somehow, at that moment, they didn't seem so far away.
As the significance of what the Prime Minister was saying struck home the tired looks lifted from the faces of those around me and they looked relieved that this really and truly was the end of the war and not just another rumour.
Later the Surrender was translated into German and was listened to by about 20 prisoners who had come in during the morning. They crowded round the radio to hear. Although I couldn't really feel sorry for them there was something very pathetic in the way they took it.
They looked at each other as they listened and gradually they dropped their heads. Occasionally a hand would wipe a tear stained eye. When it was over they just strolled aimlessly to their field as if it was all part of a bad dream. One of them, as he passed, looked at me and said, "All is caput, all is finished." He told me that he actually got to within ten miles of Moscow and had been wounded several times. As he said, he was a soldier just like myself, he was given orders and had to carry them out.
I told him I would have refused to carry out some of the orders he was given, but he asked me what I would do if my family back home were to suffer for it instead of myself. I'm afraid I couldn't answer him but I understood how he must have felt after years of hard, and I must admit, fine fighting, to come to this at the end of it.
The road behind us seems very long, it has been crowned with a lifetime of memories and experiences and now we have reached it's end."

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