Hamburg May 8, 1945-"spring and the dying season for the war were everywhere."

Politicians and the news media were probably relieved that a new Pope was elected on Victory in Europe Day, so they could change the topic of conversation to citizens. The 80th anniversary was treated by the political and news media class with the indifference of a narcissist visiting an elderly relative living in a Long Term Care Home.

VE Day 80 was something politicians endured rather than something done out of love and respect for the sacrifices of a generation that defeated Hitler, saved democracy and built a Welfare State. Truthfully, today's political leaders should be apologising for fucking things up because their corruption, greed and incompetence allowed for fascism to not only take root in the 21st century but flourish.

Yesterday's ceremonies were all bargain shop patriotism and hypocrisy. Politicians seemed to look at a metaphorical watch, wondering when the bunting could be packed away until the 100th anniversary of VE Day.

It was a very different feeling on May 8, 1945. Below is the last day of the war from my Dad's perspective, which is part of his Green & Pleasant Land. The final chapter about Labour's election in July 1945 will drop after my CT scan next week, which is to check to see if, like the cat, the cancer has come back.

Chapter 45: Hamburg May 8, 1945

On the road to Hamburg, spring and the dying season for the war were everywhere, I looked. The air was warm and smelled of petrol, the body odour of the men around me and the stench of death, nearby. Always whilst we drove there was a continuous harvest of dead bodies and broken weapons of war on the shoulder of the roads.

The convoy halted at the Rhine River where we were served a hot lunch from a mobile field kitchen. An officer informed us that the night before, The Wehrmacht and Luftwaffe in the northern part of Germany surrendered to Allied Forces. We cheered because the road to Hamburg was no longer a potential battlefield.

However, what remained of the Third Reich in the east still continued to fight, despite Hitler's suicide four days before.

Nearby wild flowers blossomed in a meadow, and bird song was alive in the trees around me. I closed my eyes and was grateful. I had survived the war and my childhood. The coming peace I knew would be nothing like what I experienced in the 1920s and 1930s. At long last, the politics of socialism was to be triumphant. It was what was promised us to keep, buggering on with the war.

The calm was broken by an explosion and frantic screams. I picked up my rifle and walked to the river’s edge, where a crowd from our unit had gathered. In the river floated the disfigured bodies of two men from our unit. They had decided to celebrate the news of the German army's surrender and took a swim in the river. The germans mined the river before their retreat across the Rhine and the men from my unit tripped a booby trap when they dove into the water.

On the journey to Hamburg, I saw an endless procession of refugees. Some carried worn luggage held together with ropes, whilst others walked with nothing but the clothes they wore. With eyes cast down, a mixture of forced labourers, ex-prisoners, ex-concentration camp inmates, and the diaspora from Germany’s eastern provinces stamped down this dusty road in search of home.

It was late afternoon when we drove into Hamburg, which had been declared an “open city” the day before. I had experienced the Blitz and seen bombing done to Britain's cities and towns. But it did not prepare me for what I saw on that first day when my convoy drove through Hamburg.

There was rubble everywhere. Anywhere I looked I saw bomb craters, burned out buildings, wrecked churches. The city looked like it had been put to the sword by the crusaders. Hamburg was devastated by a three-day joint bombing raid in the summer of 1943 by the RAF and USAAF.

At one point, 133 miles of street footage burned as hurricane-force winds swept fire across the city and consumed 20 square miles of apartments, shops, hospitals, and civilian homes. The attacks were so brutal that firestorms broke out and 50k residents of the city perished.

Two years later, we drove through Hamburg with an imperial arrogance that Roman soldiers must have also displayed when they marched past the ruins of Carthage after the Punic War was won. Buildings not destroyed by the bombing had white sheets hanging from their balconies.

The few Germans on the streets scattered like mice at the sight of our convoy.

Our airbase was located in the northern suburb of Fuhlsbüttel. When we arrived, the airfield was littered with wrecked Junkers, Messerschmitts and hastily burnt documents. Behind the base was a refugee camp that was originally constructed to house the thousands of city inhabitants whose homes were destroyed during the RAF's 1943 Operation Gomorrah against Hamburg.

On the 8th of May, my unit was put on parade to celebrate Germany's unconditional surrender. In dress uniforms, we marched through the streets of Fuhlsbüttel until we reached its main square and stood at attention.

There, the sun was warm, and I heard the wind whisper through the linden trees. For the longest time, everyone was deathly quiet. We breathed in oxygen free from the pollutants of war. Then exhaled out with relief and wonderment at the miracle of existence..

Finally, the ceremony to celebrate Victory in Europe began with us singing God Save the King.

A padre had us bow our heads for those who had died in this brutally long conflict. Our Wing Commander thanked us for our service to Britain and for defending the nation. Three cheers rang out for Britain, the RAF and our unit.

At the end of the Victory in Europe ceremony, all of us on parade broke into song. “We’ll meet again, don't know where. Don't know when, but I know we'll meet again some sunny day...”

.At dismissal, an officer invited the squadron to a victory party at a primary school across the road. The gymnasium was hastily decorated with bunting and pictures of the King and Churchill. The photos hung where, only days before, Hitler’s portrait was displayed.

Everyone inside the stiflingly hot schoolhouse gymnasium quenched their thirst with French champagne, German wine and beer looted from the stores of a Wehrmacht officer's mess.

At ours and every Victory in Europe celebration across the continent, everyone understood our generation had become part of history. We are like the generations who lived through the Peloponnesian War, the Hundred Years' War, the Napoleonic Wars, and WW1.

Great and terrible things happened during our youth, which both scarred and improved us as human beings. What we lived through during the war and the Great Depression was forever embedded in our consciousness. We were branded and marked forever by the history of our early years.

When darkness fell, I was very drunk and left the party to get some air outside. The streets had no lighting, like in the blackout. But here it was because there was no coal to fuel the city’s power generators. In that darkness, I lit a cigarette and listened to the sounds of peace, which were now and then disturbed by stray gunfire from RAF men discharging their guns in the air.

I drunkenly lurched away from the school to have a piss against another building. After I buttoned up my trousers, I stumbled around the square. I felt joyous at being alive, young, and having a chance for a future. In the shadows, I glimpsed Clementine and beckoned him over.

Have a drink with me.

Can't he respond? I’m on the hunt for plunder.

Then, as quickly as I saw him, he was gone and disappeared into the shadows of the ruined city.

I returned to the schoolhouse and drank until Robbie and another mate carried me back to base as if my body had been found wounded on a battlefield. A few hours later, I felt a damp sensation across the right side of my face.

I opened my eyes and discovered my head was resting in a urinal. A warrant officer then barked from behind.

“Lad, if you don’t fucking move on the double I am going to piss on your head.”

I stood up and saluted while a sickening smell of dried vomit tried to make itself a third party in my conversation with the warrant officer.

"Get cleaned up, because the war might be over, but not your time in the RAF."

For the last 18 months, I've been piecing together my Dad's Green and Pleasant Land, which was unfinished at the time of his death. It covers his life from 1923 to July 1945 concluding with Labour winning the General election.

The book at least in its beta form is now ready. Let me know if you want a copy and it will be sent out shortly.

Your subscriptions are so important to my personal survival because like so many others who struggle to keep afloat, my survival is a precarious daily undertaking. The fight to keep going was made worse- thanks to getting cancer along with lung disease and other comorbidities, which makes life more difficult to combat in these cost-of-living, tariff war crisis times. So, if you can, join with a paid subscription, which is just 3.50 a month, or a yearly subscription or a gift subscription. I promise the content is good, relevant and thoughtful. But if you can’t it is all good too because I appreciate we are in the same boat. Take Care, John