My V.E.Day

I spent V.E.day,Tuesday 8th May 1945,in one of the world's most heavenly places,on a houseboat moored in beautiful Lake Nagin Bagh in far flung Kashmir. It was a typical Spring day As always the sparkling lake lay framed by the incomparable loveliness of the Pir Panjal,a vast surrounding semicircle of the eternally snow capped Himalayas. On the opposite shore ,at the Srinagar Club,bastion of the Raj,the Union
Jack had early been hoisted by the conscientious Secretary. Lake traffic was the usual colourful mix of flower sellers,fortune tellers,merchants,sailing dinghies and shikaras,plus the occasional pomderous houseboat proceeding like an acean liner to a new mooring. Alongside our houseboat at beck and call was our own shikara,or private water taxi,manned day and night by 2 canoeists. On the houseboat itself for all our needs,we had a crew of four,a boatman cook,a bearer valet,a dhobi and a sweeper.And there were 3 of us,soldiers on leave from years in the plains of Northern India.

The day was spent much as usual. In the morning,a game of tennis at the Club,
an afternoon swim from the bathing station moored in the middle of the lake.a visit to the club after dinner. But we stayed on our boat to hear Churchill's 3pm Buckingham Palace announcement,8.30pm our time. And the Club put on a dance. It was'nt much of a dance,ladies being in short supply - the Residence Garden Party the next evening being much more fun with even the Indian servants getting drunk - but the effort was made and it was all very correctly heterosexual and no Mr Paul Jones. We ourselves had to make do with a third of a Major's wife,being impostors anyway,having browbeaten the Club Secretary to accept us as Members despite our lowly rank. Nevertheless ,my wife whenever she saw the photographs thought Esme was jolly lucky.

Isolated and insulated in luxury as we were,on this long awaited day pf days,we
were all too conscious of the outer world. Beyond the snow capped mountains the ghastly Japanese still had to be defeated. The Troopship on which I returned to the U.K. in 1946 had Ex Japanede Prisoners of War and their condition was such that all normal troopship discipline was abandoned.
We were fully aware of the horrors of Belsen Concentration Camp and later I was to make a pilgrimage to Belsen in 1954 at
a time when it had become a deliberately forgotten place. Also,although in the U.K.,as lord Mountbatten said,we were not even known by the general public,let alone forgotten,we felt full rapport with the Home Front of our families,the Doodle Bugs,V2's,and the general war weariness,with so much to be done in the coming Peace.

I have never been back to far Kashmir,but when I recall V.E.Day,the wondrousness of the Pir Panjal and the bejewelled lake of Nagin Bagh,I can only say "Time like an ever rolling stream bears all its sons away."

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