This last month we remembered the end of the First World War – on November 11, 1918.
I think it must have been around 1995, fifty years after the end of the Second World War, that I heard a riveting broadcast from back in the BBC’s sound archives.
It was a programme about what was known as VE Day – May 8th 1945. VE stood for victory in Europe – the victory of the Allies over the Nazis.
With unconditional German surrender came delirious street parties and celebrations all over The UK, Canada, the US and also Australia and New Zealand.
But while the war might have been won in Europe, it still raged in the Pacific.
The BBC programme included one of the most moving interviews I have ever heard. It was a conversation with a British mum – a solo mother of four boys.
In stoical but moving simplicity she described how one of her lads had died in Italy, another in North Africa. Then she told of son number three who’d struggled all his life with a less-than-perfect right leg, multiple surgeries, and finally his dream – to serve in the British Army despite his dodgy leg.
That leg, she said, was blown off in battle and the young man was lying, close to death in a hospital.
I have one other son, she continued, and he’s fighting the Japanese, and I fret about that.
I do just wish for one thing, she remarked, that they send one boy home to me intact.
On days when we remember – to quote the words on the cenotaph – the Glorious Dead, spare a thought for all the mums who waited by the door for Johnny to come marching home.