I REMEMBER quite clearly the days in 1939 when the war against Germany started. I was 11 and we had a radio we called a wireless in our main room.

When there were going to be speeches by the Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain everything stopped so that we could hear what he had to say.

It was talked about inside the family and with others we met and everyone had ideas about how destructive the coming war would be. The surprise at the beginning was the phoney war when it appeared that nothing was happening on the front.

Of course, when hostilities began in earnest the news was often very bad from our point of view.

After the fall of France, and during the Blitz, we thought of ourselves as the plucky Brits on our own against the well-armed and well-trained German war machine.

It was only in 1941 when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbour that America joined on our side.

There was the confidence that we would win in the end.

Even as a teenager I could see that this was more optimism than a cool appreciation of the situation.

I expressed this view to my parents who counselled me to keep such ideas to myself.

Older cousins were called up and when it came to my turn I was in the infantry, but did not see any fighting.

It was just as well because I did not have the aggressive impulse to kill anyone.

G Bulmer, Billingham