大象传媒

"I was travelling down, I had been up to see the boys on leave, and I was travelling down on the train, and I stood all the way from Leeds in the corridor, with sailors, airmen, soldiers, kitbags, oh you couldn鈥檛 move. Arrived in brilliant sunshine to London, but we still weren鈥檛 out of it, because there was still the war in Japan, and all the awful things that went on there were brought to light, which was terrible, but that, eventually the peace was declared in the August, which was a few months after the May 8th. Then gradually they started to demob people from the various forces. They had those awful demob suits, which was a help I suppose and a few clothing coupons. When I got to London people were all in the streets celebrating. I went home eventually, because I had to go back to Aldershot, but I got back to my mother鈥檚, and that鈥檚 when they had this reunion of the green and my mother wouldn鈥檛 go. I had to get a, transport to get to the station to get back. I used to go from Hounslow Southern Railway at Hounslow West, I think it was called. I got a train then to, sometimes to Reading, sometimes to what was the other place, but then I got transport back to the camp from there. Oh there was great celebrations, but people affected by it, somebody who they had lost or somebody in prison, a German prison, they still weren鈥檛 out of the mire you know, they were still in the thick of it which was very sad. There were other tragedies too during the ward. Some children in the village where my parents lived, their father he was over military age, but he was Canadian by birth. The two older girls, he sent out to Canada to be with their auntie, to get them away from the bombing, and they were in a liner that the u-boats torpedoed. Practically all of the passengers and crew died, there were only a few saved, but their two girls went. The day that it was announced I was walking along with my mother. We鈥檇 been to the village stores I think, I was home for a couple of days, and the husband ran out of the house sort of crying. It was a dreadful, dreadful scene. They had a baby, a little girl, and his wife had got the baby. Oh, it was terribly sad, terribly sad. But you got incidents like that , that sort of stuck in your mind. Like this chap with the bottle of whisky. I shall never forget that."

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