"Victory in Europe" - at what cost to those who fought?
My mother's Uncle Arthur (aka 'Dick') after the war " Arthur is back from internment but we cannot convey to each other what the past years were like " (1946). The people who want to celebrate "victories" in wars are rarely those who fought in them - because those who do the actual fighting are left with the memories that they'd rather forget about what war is really like. That was certainly true of my family, not least my Uncle Bert who fought through North Africa and Italy, and my Uncle Noel who did the same before also being parachuted into Greece in 1944. They both knew only too well what it's like to take part in modern warfare - and that's also why both said very little about what they had been through. My own Mum - who worked on the radar stations on the south coast looking out for the rockets that could be landing on her family back in London - also rarely discussed a war which had brought her too much grief and stress. It was only a...