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There is a kaleidoscope of memories leading up to VE night. First an air raid siren sounded mistakenly the outbreak of war. Trying to get fellow students in Brunswick Square to practice running to shelter and then after silence the all-clear, false alarm.

Next during the blitz walking across the river over London Bridge because the Underground stations on each side closed when the sirens sounded, leaving the bunks and platforms filled with sleeping shelterers, and my sister, the Red Cross nurse awake on duty all night at the station. The planes flying up the Thames seemed heading straight for us. The searchlights criss-crossed sometimes lighting them up bright silver against the blue night sky, their bombs bursting on the target city.
Battle of Britain dog fights from Greenwich Observatory watching planes flying up the Thames straight for me with searchlights searching, criss-crossing on their target 鈥� bombs bursting on the town.
Battle of Britain dog fights from the Greenwich Observatory not knowing whether our planes or the German鈥檚 were spinning down and exploding, and later on watching London burning and the bombs bursting, from the top of Crystal Palace Hill where the trees had been felled to provide for War Effort wood.
On VE night the bonfires in the streets of London seen from Crystal Palace created again the spectacle of London Burning. Breath indrawn we left the car in Dulwich, and took a tram to Oxford Street to dance round policemen in the streets.

Before that just past Harrods the a bus stopped suddenly on a quiet sunny day as the front of a 5 storey house fell flat across the main road with an unexploded parachute bomb from last night鈥檚 blitz going off. I once had a defused parachute bomb hanging in the chimney of my flat. But we all had bomb stories so we didn鈥檛 talk about them.

鈥淎fter now,鈥� I thought on VE night 鈥淚 can put off my Emergency Medical Service badge, and stop worrying whether I would be able to cope with a sudden casualty. No longer have to tell the Rescue Service members carrying the stretchers whether their destination was the ambulance or the mortuary. Nor would I again go down the smoking streets past buildings collapsed in the night with the characteristic burning smells in my nostrils.鈥�

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