{"id":2742,"date":"2020-05-11T15:42:36","date_gmt":"2020-05-11T13:42:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/conservatives-paris.org\/blog\/?page_id=2742"},"modified":"2020-05-11T15:42:36","modified_gmt":"2020-05-11T13:42:36","slug":"well-meet-again-michael-barker-recalls-the-victory-parade-of-8-june-1946","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/conservatives-paris.org\/blog\/?page_id=2742","title":{"rendered":"\u201cWe\u2019ll meet again\u201d: Michael Barker recalls the Victory Parade of 8 June 1946"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>After spending the war with\nmy grandparents in South Wales, we were\nnow based in Sydenham temporarily while my father was building a house in\nAshtead in Surrey for his family. He had returned from signals service on the\naircraft carrier <em>Indomitable<\/em> in many oceans around the world. Now\nresuming his career as a timber broker in the City, he had arranged for my\nyounger brother and me to\nview the Victory Parade on 8 June 1946 from offices opposite St Paul&rsquo;s\ncathedral.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>We observed the parade with\nits cavalcade of the mechanised transport column, smartly marching soldiers and\nindeed 750 Land Girls.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>True, we did not get to join the\nhuge crowds around the Mall, but it\nwas a memorable event nevertheless for a youngster. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Only latterly did I\ndiscover that the brave Poles were excluded thanks to a cowardly lefty\ndeference to the Soviets. My RC mother would greet the displaced Poles, unable\nto return to their homeland, and treat them to tea in John Cobb&rsquo;s department\nstore.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Also I later discovered,\nwhen I led one of my early annual city trips for BCiP to Reims, that it was in Eisenhower&rsquo;s atmospheric\nHQ, its walls lined with\nlarge scale maps, that he actually received the German surrender on 7 May 1945.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>After spending the war with my grandparents in South Wales, we were now based in Sydenham temporarily while my father was building a house in Ashtead in Surrey for his family. He had returned from signals service on the aircraft carrier Indomitable in many oceans around the world. Now resuming his career as a timber [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":2584,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-2742","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/conservatives-paris.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2742","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/conservatives-paris.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/conservatives-paris.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/conservatives-paris.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/conservatives-paris.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2742"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/conservatives-paris.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2742\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2743,"href":"https:\/\/conservatives-paris.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2742\/revisions\/2743"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/conservatives-paris.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2584"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/conservatives-paris.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2742"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}