大象传媒

A quarter past one.
鈥淵ou want to join -You want to join- You want to join old Churchill`s army. Ten bob a week wife and kids to keep - Hob nailed boots and blisters on your feet - You want to join- You want to join -....鈥�
It was over - at least in Europe. It was dark and Mam and Dad took me, then aged nearly 5 years old, to meet up with Cotmanhay in celebration on that first night of peace. On the waste land at the top of Wesley Street a bonfire was blazing, someone was playing an accordion and people were dancing. In most streets there was a fire but everywhere there were people, talking, shouting, singing. I asked, "What time is it?" "A quarter past one". I fell to pondering on how could you have a quarter past one in the middle of the night. We must have walked through Shipley Woods in the dark because we stood on the track up from the pit and looked up as a huge bonfire was ignited on Woodside Pit Tip. People were cheering and moved aside as about four men with their arms over each others shoulders marched along, towards the pit singing, 鈥淵ou want to join...鈥� It was the only time I heard those words but they stuck fast in my memory.
Later would come the Street Parties. Eric Searles from Richmond Avenue came to invite me. Tables were set up the length of Richmond Avenue. It may have been then or at a later party they hung a banner across the top of the street- WELCOME TO YE OLD PEARLY GATES, which is what the Avenue was once called because of the white gates across the top. Union Jacks waved from the windows. A bonfire was started against the allotment gate and Dad set off the remaining thunderflashes from his ARP stuff - all the rest, the pumps, the tin hats, the large map with its coloured squares would be duly collected in a lorry. (Doubtless somewhere the farmer was trying to get Bomb Disposal - "I`ve cut th`corn now what do I do?")
It was over, for a while but we still had worries about men now sent to the Far East. I sat near the Wireless one day and heard that a special kind of bomb had been exploded. How fragmentary is memory that I do not know if it was even called the Atom Bomb. Finally it was over, in the practicalities at least, and men came back, many wounded in body and in mind. Some, I mention just two, Albert Barrowcliffe of Clinton Terrace and Joe Pounder of Heanor Road, did not. The news began to emerge of something called The Railway of Death in Burma. These two were of thousands who were starved, tortured and worked to death by the Japanese.
Yes Peace at last but rationing would continue for years to come. Materials and services were wrecked and the dark shadow spread out like pooling blood through decades. We were told that our allies, The Russians who had lost 27,000,000 dead (To get an idea of large numbers - imagine you count at the rate of 1 a second, 1 - 2 -3, at this rate it will take you 7,500 hours, nearly 11 months to count to 27 million), were now our enemies. So began the Cold War and the threat that the next time the sirens sounded we had four and a half minutes before we were cremated alive by nuclear weapons.

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