Year Zero Read Online Free Page A

same time.
    Churchill’s speech on the BBC was heard on radios around the world. There was no more room to move on Parliament Square outside Westminster, where loudspeakers had been installed. People were pressed against the gates of Buckingham Palace. Cars could no longer get through the crowds in the West End. Big Ben sounded three times. The crowd went quiet, and at last Churchill’s voice boomed through the loudspeakers: “The German war is therefore at an end . . . almost the whole world was combined against the evil-doers, who are now prostrate before us . . . We must now devote all our strength and resources to the completion of our task, both at home andabroad . . .” And here his voice broke: “Advance Britannia! Long live the cause of freedom! God save the King.” A little later, he made the V for Victory sign on the balcony of the Ministry of Health. “God bless you all. This is your victory!” And the crowd yelled back: “No it is yours!”
    The
Daily Herald
reported: “There were fantastic ‘mafficking’ scenes in the heart of the city as cheering, dancing, laughing, uncontrollable crowds mobbed buses, jumped on the roofs of cars, tore down a hoarding for causeway bonfires, kissed policemen and dragged them into the dancing . . . Motorists gave the V-sign on their electric horns. Out on the river tugs and ships made the night echo and re-echo with V-sirens.”
    Somewhere in that crowd were my eighteen-year-old mother, who had been given time off from her boarding school, and her younger brother. My grandmother, Winifred Schlesinger, daughter of German-Jewish immigrants, had every reason to be happy, and her worship of Churchill knew no bounds. But she was nervous that her children might get lost in the “excited, drunken crowd—especially Yanks.”
    In New York, five hundred thousand people celebrated in the streets. Curfew was lifted. The clubs—the Copacabana, the Versailles, the Latin Quarter, the Diamond Horseshoe, El Morocco—were packed and open half the night. Lionel Hampton was playing at the Zanzibar, Eddie Stone at the Hotel Roosevelt Grill, and “jumbo portions” of food were on offer at Jack Dempsey’s.
    In Paris, on the Place de la République, a reporter for the
Libération
newspaper watched “a moving mass of people, bristling with allied flags. An American soldier was wobbling on his long legs, in a strange state of disequilibrium, trying to take photographs, two bottles of cognac, one empty, one still full, sticking from his khaki pockets.” A U.S. bomber pilot thrilled the crowd by flying his Mitchell B-25 through the gap under the Eiffel Tower. On the Boulevard des Italiens “an enormous American sailor and a splendid negro” decided to engage in a competition. They pressed every woman to their “huge chests” and counted the number of lipstick marks left on their cheeks. Bets were laid on the two rivals. At the Arc de Triomphe, a bigger crowd than had ever been seen offered thanksto General de Gaulle, who flashed a rare smile. People belted out the “Marseillaise,” and the Great War favorite, “Madelon”:
    There is a tavern way down in Brittany
    Where weary soldiers take their liberty
    The keeper’s daughter whose name is Madelon
    Pours out the wine while they laugh and “carry on” . . .
    O Madelon, you are the only one
    O Madelon, for you we’ll carry on
    It’s so long since we have seen a miss
    Won’t you give us just a kiss . . .
    And yet V-E Day in Paris was regarded by some as a bit of an anticlimax. France, after all, had already been liberated in 1944. Simone de Beauvoir wrote that her memory of that night was “much more confused than my memories of our other, earlier festivities, perhaps because my feelings were so confused. The victory had been won a long way off; we had not