My VE Day was nothing like our image of it today. I hope we can honour what it really meant | Sheila Hancock

It is in May 2025, at four in the morning, and I was sitting in bed, without sleep, and we look at a huge moon that lights the fixed world.

Eighty -five years ago, in 1940, there was a seventy -year -old child wearing a cracked leather sofa in pajamas sunken in the urine, looking through a strange window, and he prays that this satellite itself will protect my mother and my father from the deadly bombs that fall in London.

On that morning, my father had linked a sticker with my gas mask belt in my name and my title written on it, and I was waved from the podium barrier after he made me read, again, my identity number in the event of a separation from my collection of leave. CJFQ 29: 4; My old mind has forgotten many things, but this number is deeply caused. Details of what happened after that, it is confused, until the door was closed at the bottom of the stairs in my pallet by the unwanted hosts, and shivering on this recovery. As an adult, my first reaction to everything is the fear, which I put in my childhood in wartime, along with my ability to stay. After the escape of two fugitives, I was allowed to return to London, preferring bombs on the locals.

This month, we celebrate the eighty anniversary dayAnd I am concerned that we will turn it into an ugly celebration in World War II. Yes, in 1945, we felt comfortable because bombs, ruins and missile weapons had stopped, and we heard that there was fun on the western end of London – but where I lived it was less strict. I felt out of the end of the war: We are still waiting impatiently for the return of the young boy next to the common terror of the prisoners of the Japanese War camp, and many of my friends were trying to accept them as strange fathers who knew barely knew him. Informed details for Holocaust DetectedAnd I imagine that adults were completely tired and often sad. For five years, they lived under the threat of the occupation. Churchill said Their warrior on the beaches He never gave up, but he did not deny that he could invade us. In fact, a miracle was not. This threat is what adults knew, and they were supposed to be unaccounted, knowing that they could not withstand.

I remember in the early days of the war to ask my father about some of the concrete blocks that appeared on the sidewalk, and some black metal cylinders along the limit. He explained, somewhat unconvincing, that the blocs will be dragged to the way to stop Nazi tanks, and the cylinders will be lit to make a smoky screen that would, with incoming balloons that fill the sky, and hinder their planes. Being close to some weapons and sidewalks, our area around Bexleyheath was the scene of many battles between Spitfires and Nazi aircraft. There was even the mobile Ack-ACK pistol stationed on the road behind our home. When we were in our garden air raid shelter, the noise of that gun Certainly, he is afraid of intelligence from us, if not the Germans.

Because I am now deeply deeply signs of history that repeat itself, I want everyone to remember that war is terrible. On 1945, the world was looking at the complete destruction of many cities, some of us before us. Tens of millions From people were dead or homeless. It was difficult to rejoice in sincerity in May 1945.

Sorry for being a spoiler. I actually hope that everyone will meet together and spend a great time on the eighties. I think I may have enjoyed myself in 1945. Children had a street party tea, with Junket and Blancmange (whatever happened to them?), With evaporated milk like cream, and a few chocolate. A feast in those fortified days accurately.

But what I remember most is when the tables were removed, someone gramovon out of the wind and put it on the garden wall. Adults made some luxurious dance. They held each other in their arms! Clash together. Until I saw my father accepting my mother on the front. He did not hear about behavior. Were they expressing their relief to approach the end of a few horrific years? Or were they giving each other to confront the inevitable struggle to wear mental and physical wounds of the war, and to build a better, more just and more peaceful world that they wanted to create?

Now, our beautiful planet is threatened in several ways. History shows that the solution can definitely not be found in authoritarian leadership. Let’s aim to unify the global wisdom available to treat global crises together. Time runs out.

This week, the moon reminded me of a child in wartime, along with its contemporaries, which will soon disappear, with us our painful memories. Look back with some pride in the way the adult generation survived, drain but designed to make the world a better place. And they did.

Please, do not let us betray them. We must not forget and we should not let that happen again.