Roy Knight

Roy remembers ice cream and “trying to look like real soldiers”

I was 15 on VE Day and living in South Norwood near the Crystal Palace football ground. I I’d made friends in the Army cadets who included me into their 3^rd Battalion. On VE Day a group of us including me and Harry Puttick, now another Chelsea Pensioner, took the train from East Croydon to Victoria and went to join in the celebrations. 

There were our soldiers and sailors, American soldiers and sailors, Canadians too, because their embassy was there. We were in our uniforms, trying to look like real soldiers and waving our Union Jacks. There were 500 musicians across the whole width of The Mall, 12 abreast, preceded by bagpipes and drum majors. They were playing the favourite songs of the day: It’s a long way to Tipperary and My old man said follow the van. The drum majors were showing off, throwing their maces in the air; the bagpipes were playing Scottish melodies with the drummers playing along. I was a drummer and bugler in the Army cadets and later in the Royal Fusiliers – my father’s regiment. We never drank but we went and had an ice cream in Lyons on Coventry Street.