Do You Believe In Happy Endings?

Part 13

One summers day in 1944 while I was playing out with a friend and messing about in this hedge, suddenly there was this strange noise and a darkening of the sky; looking up my jaw dropped wide open in disbelief as to what I saw. The sky was absolutely carpeted with aircraft of every type, it was simply amazing, there were other formations and squadrons joining in from every direction this went on for some time; there were literally thousands of American and British planes droning their way overhead. We two kids where ecstatic we were jumping up and down like over animated jack-in-the boxes, as we ran into the village all the other kids and their parents were out and acting excitedly we knew that this was it. I had never seen anything like this before nor am I ever likely to see anything like it again, it was one of those rare but major things that happen in life and I was there to witness it.Of course everyone knows the outcome of this significant event, after the next couple of days we took it for granted that we were winning the war even though it was far from over, Visiting the cinema over the next year made us realise just what had been happening in Europe, when the death camps where librated we got the picture of what had really been happening; all those poor unfortunate people that had died and suffered there. How anyone could do that to another person is beyond belief, I myself was just a child and it was a shock to my system; even now when I see pictures of the atrocities that were committed it turns my stomach. Now in the meantime Britain was being bombarded with V 1’s and V 2’s this was in the south of the country, we would go to the cinema and see launchings of these jet and rocket propelled bombs. Of course we would be shown the rockets exploding on the launch site, which made everyone in the audience shout with glee. Things were starting to change and the feeling was that war was finally going to be over soon, The family was starting make trips back to our home town a lot now, it was just a matter of time before we finally did, my father had escaped from an Italian prisoner of war camp into Switzerland a year before the end of the war, and on the 27th of October 1944 my father came home to flags and decorations after being repatriated from Switzerland. For this time at least it seemed that life was going to have a happy ending, he was on leave until the New Year after which he had to rejoin his regiment. It was nine months later that he was demobbed from the army with many others.