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"This story was submitted to the People's War site by a volunteer from ´óÏó´«Ã½ Radio Berkshire's CSV Action Desk on behalf of George Corbett and has been added to the site with his permission. George fully understands the site's terms and conditions".

During the war years I can honestly say that, at no time did I ever feel particularly afraid, not until just before the end of the hostilities. Even the trauma of being bombed out had not worried me but one night, near to the end of 1944, I heard a sound that really did fill me with fear. It was a piecing, screaming shriek that would have made the blood of the hardiest mortal run cold, let alone mine. It was the start of the V2 rocket assault; the latest of Hitler’s ‘secret weapons’ had arrived.

Fortunately, I believe that not too many of these fearsome devices landed on our shores before that most happy and long awaited event arrived. The eighth of May, 1945 and the end of the war in Europe - VE Day.

Now it was party time and the whole country seemed to come alive. People massed in Trafalgar Square and outside Buckingham Palace in celebration and every street, it seemed, held their own Street Party. I vividly remember the one that I went to, with tables laid out with whatever food could be obtained; most of it, I suspect, being prepared by willing housewives in their own homes. In reality, it was probably rather meagre fare, as food was still rationed and hard to come by but to us revellers it was superb stuff.

After tea, it was entertainment time. No professional entertainers of course, just local amateurs doing their best on a very grand looking stage that had been erected, again by local people. I, together with three of my friends, formed what was, in all probability, the early fore runner of the present day ‘Pop Group’ as we got up and sang ‘Roll Out the Barrel’. Surprisingly, we were not booed off the stage and we each received a packet of plasticine as a reward for our efforts.

Thus for us in Europe the war ended although it was still to continue in the far east for another three months and, in a way for me, it did not quite end there. In later years I came to understand that, far from being the fun that I had thought it to be, it was, in reality, horrific. Seven years after the war ended I enlisted in the Royal Air Force where, for a short time, I had the privilege to fly in the Avro Lancaster — the heavy bomber workhorse of the war years. Many of my fellow crew - members had seen action over enemy territory in the ‘Lanc’ and many were the tales that were told, of the slaughter and destruction that occurred during those years and of the intense hardships that resulted. Many friends and colleagues had been lost or severely maimed and some of those that I served with had survived perilously close ‘escapes’, when flying on these missions.

The full horror of the war however did not completely hit home until, near the end of my RAF service, I met and later married a lovely girl, called Margaret. She gave me everything — except a Father in Law. George William Pratt was killed when the troop ship, on which he was being transported, was torpedoed and sunk somewhere off the coast of Malaya, early in nineteen forty-two.

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