I remember it so vividly
The war is over.
And then, of course, we didn't hear
When the treaty was signed at 3 o' clock
you'd have thought that we would soon be
that date was May in 1945.
And then the Japanese war ended in August,
and after we had dropped
the bomb, the nuclear bomb on Hiroshima
and followed that with the bomb
on Nagasaki, and then would you believe
the Japanese surrendered without that?
I do not think they would ever have
It wasn't in their psyche, really,
but they realised those bombs were so
terrible that
At the time, we cheered like mad.
It was over
reach, which we didn't know about.
It was over.
And of course, we really thought
The demobilisation did start fairly soon,
for six years or who had
been abroad and so on, but.
Or who had been prisoners of war.
It was right that they were demobilised
first, but time went on and on and on.
And in fact, I was not demobbed until June
1947, two years after
the war had finished.
By then, I can tell you,
anxious, because I had a place
I had to register in September.
So I think I must have blotted
my copybook a bit in that last few months.
But nevertheless, I enjoyed my time
in the waf, and I'm proud that I.
I did my bit.
That's how I looked at it.
I did my bit and I did
help to save civilization
in Europe and in the world, in fact.
And I do value our democracy
We are so privileged in this country
Sometimes we say we're not
We have to be careful,
But we are still a proud democratic nation
and doing my bit during the war
has really made me realise
