Vox Meditantis

VJ Day – London, 15th August 1945

Whitehall roared like a river broken from its banks the moment the Prime Minister’s words crackled through a dozen tin-coloured loudspeakers: Japan had accepted the terms of surrender, the war was over at last. Wing Commander James “Mac” MacLeod felt the current of human noise buffet him – cheers, shrieks, laughter pitched too high – but inside his ribs everything stayed strangely still.

Confetti drifted from windows high above the Treasury, tatty rectangles cut from office stationery that fluttered down like pale moths. Girls in summer frocks climbed lampposts to tie bunting where blackout hoods had hung for six long years. A Home Guard drummer beat out a ragged victory tattoo on an upside-down dustbin lid, and Mac was close enough to smell the tang of warm metal each time the improvised drum rang. The scent of spilled beer, engine fumes and damp woollen uniforms mixed with a sweeter note – Liberty silk perfume dabbed behind a thousand jubilant ears. Sensory excess pressed in on him until the air itself seemed to vibrate.

He kept his shoulders square, RAF greatcoat immaculate despite the August sun, but the celebration washed over him like applause meant for another man. In his pocket lay a letter he had rehearsed delivering to a widow three hundred times on the flight back from Rangoon: a neat envelope softened at the corners, addressed to “Mrs Margaret White, Surrey,” written in the small hours after the Liberator crew’s last sortie. He had never posted it. How ought one to begin – “Your husband was the finest pilot I ever served alongside, and he died buying the rest of us time” – or perhaps that was too direct, too brutal. He had decided it was kinder to hand the envelope over in person, to answer whatever questions she asked. Yet two months had slipped past in debriefings and hospital waiting rooms, and still the letter burned against his breast like a medal that had not been earned.

Around him, London exhaled its collective relief. Church bells that had been half-silent since 1940 pealed so loudly the sound bounced from the stone façades of government buildings, scattering pigeons in panicked clouds. Fireworks, illegal but tolerated tonight, cracked scarlet against a lemon dusk. Three child evacuees – tags still looped through buttonholes, although they were home for good now – danced in a circle, chanting nonsense lyrics about Mr Tojo’s last train. Mac watched them whirl, the image doubling, then trebling, before he realised post-migraine tears blurred his vision.

Someone clasped his sleeve. A girl with lipstick smudged by enthusiastic kisses tried to pull him into a jitterbug forming beside a military lorry. “Cheer up, sir! Your lot won us the skies!” she laughed, oblivious to the tautness in his jaw. Polite, he offered a smile that felt embalmed, tipped his cap and stepped backwards until he collided with a lamppost. The thud jarred the base of his skull and brought him merciful clarity: he needed space, air unclogged by celebration, before the tremor behind his breastbone became visible.

He turned south-west, threading through The Mall where the red gravel looked newly blood-bright under strings of fairy lights. Every few yards some stranger thrust a bottle of Victory Ale into his hand; he passed each along untouched. Mac could remember too clearly the last time he had tasted alcohol. It had been Christmas 1943 at Chittagong – Sergeant David “Chalky” White standing on a mess table, voice cracked with boozy exuberance, leading a raucous carol because it drowned the tinnitus that followed every sortie. Chalky, who had gone down in flame and smoke three months later, buying Mac the five seconds required to nurse his own crippled Liberator home. Chalky, whose widow would soon read words dipped in widower’s ink.

Green Park opened up ahead, an island of darkness compared with the floodlit boulevards. Gaslights threw modest halos along the path, and here the crowd thinned to courting couples and solitary cigarette ends glowing red between contemplative fingers. Mac loosened his tie, found a bench beneath a plane tree, and allowed his knees to unlock. Even sitting, he kept his spine rigid, a wire drawn too tight. He inhaled, hoping for the earthy scent of soil and cut grass, something honest and peaceable. Instead he smelled cordite – memory’s trick, but sharply real.

He closed his eyes. The electrical whine of Bristol engines filled his ears, or seemed to. Stories told by nerves, nothing more. He pressed thumb and forefinger into his eyelids until bright stars bloomed against the black. When he opened them again, the stars rearranged themselves into a human figure standing beside the park railings: a lean man in RAF blues that hung too large, face cadaverous and unshielded by any cap. Moonlight – or perhaps the glow from Buckingham Palace floodlamps – lit the contours of high cheekbones, a broken nose healed awry, eyes set deep as if the sockets had tried to swallow them whole.

Mac’s first, lunatic thought was that some poor sod had raided an abandoned uniform shop to join the festivities. Then the man shifted, weight falling to his right leg, left shoulder rolling forward in an unconscious habit that had always looked like scepticism during briefings. Recognition detonated inside Mac as violently as any bomb he had dropped over the Rangoon docks.

Chalky.

The name presented itself with the certainty of Morse tapped against his eardrum. Yet it could not be Chalky. Chalky’s Liberator had vanished in a fireball low over the mangrove fringe, the flames reflected on the black water beyond. Japanese searchlights raked the estuary like a stage set. Mac had watched through a spider-web of cracked cockpit glass while starshells painted the sky garish purple and orange. He had written the letter, for God’s sake. He had sat opposite Air Commodore Fawcett and confirmed “No possibility of survival.”

Nevertheless the figure remained, looking beyond the park railings at the river of celebrating Londoners. A group of WAAFs hurried past, arms linked, and the lean man offered them a shy smile. The WAAFs giggled, emboldened by champagne and euphoria, but hurried on when they spotted Mac’s fixed stare.

Mac rose, knees locked again, every muscle suddenly light with adrenaline. If he walked towards the apparition and it dissolved, perhaps the edges of his mind would unravel too, and he would finally earn the rest that doctors called “exhaustion leave.” Better to face the vision than to retreat into a lifetime of wondering whether ghosts could breathe.

He took one step, then another, gravel crunching softly beneath his polished shoes. Chalky – or the man wearing Chalky’s bones – turned at the sound. Recognition sparked in those hollowed eyes, unmistakable and almost embarrassed, as though he too struggled to believe the evidence. His mouth opened, closed, opened again.

Mac stopped three paces away. The voices of London receded until only the faint metallic clink of a distant tram bell existed between them. For a heartbeat neither man spoke. The moment stretched, trembled, threatened to break.

“Good evening, sir,” the figure said at last, voice rough, vowels tentative, as though speech itself were rusted machinery. A POW’s voice, Mac realised, and his stomach tightened.

His own reply snagged behind his teeth. The sentence he had repeated in nightmares – Chalky, I’m sorry – would not pass his lips. Instead he managed a single incredulous whisper, meant only for himself but stolen by the warm August breeze: “You can’t be here.”

The apparition gave a thin smile, something between apology and relief. “I get that a lot,” he answered.

Mac’s pulse hammered so loudly he could not hear the cheering that rolled across St James’s Park like surf. He was aware only of his own blood and the impossible man before him, alive when he should be ash.

And in that instant, the Victory bells no longer sounded triumphant. They tolled like unanswered questions.

Mac swallowed, the words jammed in his throat as Chalky’s thin smile flickered in the dim glow of the park lights. His palms itched with the urge to wipe away sweat – or tears – and he forced himself to speak. “How…?” The single syllable trembled on his lips.

Chalky turned fully, the edge of moonlight tracing the gaunt planes of his face. His hair, lighter now and flecked with grey, caught the faintest shimmer in the dim light. He spoke with a faint rasp, each word measured. “I know it’s impossible to believe, old chap. But I’m here.”

Mac stared, disbelieving. The engine drone and cheers of London melted away until only Chalky’s voice remained, echoing in his skull. “You…you were dead,” he whispered.

“We all thought so,” Chalky replied. His shoulders sagged as though he carried an invisible pack. “Shot down over the Bay of Bengal. I drifted for hours before the Japs found me, hauled aboard a destroyer like a drowned rat.”

Mac felt nausea. He had seen the sea catch Chalky’s bomber in flame; he remembered the flash of tracer and the desperate S.O.S. signals. He had watched the sky writhe with fireshells, convinced his friend was gone. He should have written that letter months ago. He had begun it so many times.

They fell into step along the gravel path, the park’s darkness swallowing them. Clusters of revellers, WAAF nurses laughing arm in arm, passed without slowing. Mac kept his gaze fixed ahead, convinced if he looked again the vision would vanish.

“I survived the crash – my crash.” Chalky continued. “Grabbed a chunk of the wing that stayed afloat and clung to it. Then…” His jaw clenched. Mac could almost see the scarring of those months etched into the tense set of his neck. “Then seventeen months in a rice paddy, building tunnels, hauling coal. Beatings, disease – half the lads didn’t make it through their first winter.”

Mac’s chest constricted. He tugged at his collar. What right had he to feel relief when he had never known the half of it? He had flown his sorties, faced flak and fighters, but he had never been broken by captivity.

“How did you…?” he began, but Chalky held up a hand.

“Not your story,” he said softly. “You were flying missions. You thought I was ash. You mourned properly.” His voice cracked. “Better than most.”

Suddenly, Mac felt the old rush of anger surfacing – anger at the years he had spent under false pretences of grief, anger at himself for believing the worst. He halted mid-step, forcing Chalky to stop too. Gravel shifted beneath their boots.

“I blamed you,” he hissed. “First for dying – then, tonight, for turning up alive while the rest of them never came home. I even told the Air Ministry you’d gone down heroically, just so your wife could have something certain to mourn.” His words trailed off. He remembered flight logs, telegrams sent to Mrs White up in Surrey. She had mourned publicly, pinned newspapers on her mantelpiece. Mac had been her sole informant, the author of her grief.

Chalky watched him with steady eyes. “You did what you thought was right. I don’t hold it against you.” He paused. “In camp, you survive by planning the next hour, not the next campaign. Find water, find shelter, keep your mates alive.”

The phrase struck Mac like a detonating shell: planning the next hour. He pictured the letter in his pocket, its neat script an affront to survival’s brutal necessities.

They reached a clearing by a shallow fountain. Benches ringed the marble basin, and Chalky sank onto one, pressing both hands to his temples as though each pulse threatened to split him in two. Mac moved to the bench beside him, knees brushing Chalky’s. He wanted to reassure his friend, but fear and guilt tangled his tongue.

Chalky gestured to the empty seat. “Sit,” he said, voice low.

Mac obeyed, rigidity draining from his frame in a series of small cracks. He watched the water’s gentle ripple, saw the reflection of lantern-lit leaves overhead.

“I planned for you to die,” Mac murmured, eyes fixed on the pool. “I planned my existence around your absence. If you hadn’t – ” He broke off, throat raw.

Chalky’s gaze softened. “I know.” He rested a hand on Mac’s forearm. Skin felt fragile, paper-thin. “I watched them write me off, heard the shells burst above what I thought was my grave. But once I was gone, I learned that goals have to be simple. A piece of bread. A scrap of letter paper. A promise to myself to walk again once they let me.”

Mac closed his eyes. He could hear his own heartbeat, fierce enough to drown out the fountain’s murmur. The park was still alive with distant jubilation, but here in this pocket of shadow he felt the full weight of years crammed into minutes.

Chalky inhaled, the breath rattling like a brittle hinge. When he spoke again, his words were soft but carried the undeniable ring of certainty. “Ask yourself, Mac. How do you plan your goals when everything you thought you knew about the war – about who lived and who died – was wrong?”

The question settled between them like summer mist. It carried within it every unspooled memory: the roar of anti-aircraft batteries, the acrid stink of burning jungle, the hollow ache of loss. Mac’s mind reeled, searching for an answer that did not exist yet.

He opened his mouth to speak – first to deny, then to question, then to accuse fate itself – but found no words adequate. Instead, he drew in a shuddering breath, and in that moment, the world beyond the park fence resumed its chaotic symphony: laughter, bells, cheers rising and falling like distant tides.

He turned to Chalky, saw the faint gleam of tears under weary eyes. Chalky was waiting, silently, offering the single key to understanding what lay ahead.

Mac exhaled, shoulders slumping for the first time since the surrender announcement. The question hung in the air, unanswered and impossible, yet brimming with the promise that – if answered truly – it might release him from the waste of deception and grief.

He stared at Chalky’s right hand, still resting on his forearm, and knew life had handed him an unforeseen second chance. He would need a new compass. But first, he had to confront the void where his old goals had collapsed.

And in the hush of Green Park, as lanterns swung overhead and the tide of victory ebbed behind them, Mac prepared to answer Chalky’s question.

Mac pressed the heels of his hands together, knuckles whitening as the question hung between them. Beyond the iron railings, London still crackled with jubilation – horns blaring, women singing “Roll Out the Barrel,” and great bronze bells booming for a war finally buried on 15th August 1945. Yet here, in the hush of Green Park, the world contracted to two men and the future they had not thought to possess.

Chalky drew a slow breath, as though testing the capacity of lungs long starved of clean air. “We used to reckon in inches, not miles,” he murmured. “If you thought about getting home, you went mad. So you aimed smaller: a sip of water without weevils, enough rice to stop your ribs showing, a joke that wouldn’t bring a beating.”

Mac imagined the jungle camp – rotting bamboo huts, guards in stained uniforms, the sun a whip across bare backs. “And when the war ended,” he asked, voice brittle, “what goals were left?”

Chalky’s gaze drifted to the dark crown of Buckingham Palace. “Living without hating. That was the first. Harder than you’d think.”

Mac flinched; hatred had been his prop for six years. Hatred of barrage balloons snaring good men, of bad maps, of faceless ordnance clerks who miscounted parachutes. Without rage, would anything remain of him?

Chalky gave a thin cough, half laugh. “The second goal was taste. Real bread, real tea. You’d be startled how life returns, slice by slice.”

A breeze shivered the plane-tree leaves, rattling them like distant applause. Mac felt suddenly, painfully hungry – an honest, physical desire rather than the hollow craving that had haunted tropical nights. It startled him to realise he could want anything other than oblivion.

He sat up. “There’s a canteen truck by Admiralty Arch. They’ll be doling out sandwiches till dawn. We could – ” The offer faltered; he was a decorated officer proposing a midnight picnic like a schoolboy on break.

But Chalky’s eyes warmed. “Bread and tea,” he said. “A sound beginning.”

They rose, joints cracking. As they reached the path, Mac touched the envelope in his breast pocket – Margaret’s letter, words of condolence turned scrap paper by this miracle. Guilt stabbed him. “There’s something else,” he confessed, halting once more. “I wrote to your wife. Never sent it.”

Chalky’s brows lifted, though no reproach entered his features. “Margaret deserved to mourn.”

“She deserves the truth more.” Mac forced himself to meet those hollow-camp eyes. “Will you come with me to Surrey? We can burn this letter together, write a better one.”

Chalky considered, head tilted, as if weighing tea rations again. “Not tonight. Let her have her peace until I’m strong enough to stand on my own doorstep. Send a telegram first – neutral phrasing, no shock. Then we go.”

The plan settled onto Mac’s shoulders like a properly cut tunic – awkward, but right. A telegram: REPORTED SAFE. HOME SOON. LOVE. He nodded.

They headed towards The Mall. Street-lamps haloed chalk dust swirling in their footfalls, and every few yards strangers clasped their hands or slapped their backs, mistaking tear-shined faces for joy. Mac allowed it; the city had earned its revel.

At Admiralty Arch a queue snaked round a NAAFI van. The scent of yeast and margarine drifted across the flag-draped stones. When their turn came, the girl behind the counter – a young lance-corporal shivering under borrowed khaki – poured each a tin mug of sweet tea. Chalky sniffed the steam like sacrament before sipping. His eyelids fluttered. “Sugar,” he breathed.

Mac watched, throat thick. Here was a man discovering heaven in five pennies’ worth of leaf. No sermon could preach louder.

Across the avenue, the bronze statue of Captain James Cook towered near Admiralty Arch, its weather-darkened surface catching the lamplight while they nursed their tin mugs of sweet tea. Chalky broke his bread, offered half. Mac accepted, chewing slowly, letting the dull comfort spread through his chest.

“I keep wondering,” he said after a while, “how to plan anything that won’t turn to dust again. The empire’s cracking, the papers talk of atom bombs – what if we’re merely between fires?”

Chalky leaned back, palms braced against the cool stone. “Then plan for a fire-proof thing.” His eyes drifted into the lamplit haze, settling on nothing in particular. “Kindness, Mac. It cannot burn. Small mercies, stubborn decency. Build on that.”

The words settled like wet cement, heavy yet shaping. Kindness: not a concept hammered into bomber crews. But he could picture it – teaching city boys to navigate by stars instead of searchlights; helping Chalky’s camp mates, if any yet breathed; walking Margaret through the miracle of resurrection with gentler steps than telegrams could muster.

Across the avenue a girl played a mouth-organ, the notes warbling but hopeful. Mac found himself recalling childhood summers on the Clyde, gulls keening, salt on his lips. For the first time since 1940 the memory did not hurt.

He wiped a fingertip across his brow, surprised to feel tears. “All these years,” he whispered, “I thought courage meant never flinching. Perhaps it’s letting oneself heal.”

“Precisely.” Chalky’s voice warmed. “Courage to live slow, live kind, live true.”

Mac inhaled to the bottom of his lungs, tasting petrol, smoke, blossom, tea. Life, whole and messy. He glanced at his friend – too thin, eyes shadowed, yet alive – and felt something inside him click into new alignment. The compass had swung.

“When you’re ready,” he said, “I’ll drive you to Surrey. We’ll bring flowers, not apologies.” He paused, the old habit of strategy stirring. “After that, I might take the instructor post at Cranwell. Teach the fledglings more than formation turns – teach them how to land and walk away.”

Chalky grinned, weary yet radiant. “That, Mac, is a goal worth the making.”

They finished their tea. The queue had dwindled; the city’s roar softened to scattered choruses and distant fireworks. Dawn’s grey hint crept along rooftops. Mac checked his watch – 04:13 – and rose, bones aching but spirit oddly light.

“Come on,” he said, offering a hand. Chalky took it, grip fragile yet determined. Together they crossed The Mall, boots echoing on flagstones now littered with confetti. Pink, blue, white scraps clung to Chalky’s greatcoat – paper petals for a man returned from burial.

At Horse Guards Parade they paused. The Union Flag stirred overhead, catching the first flush of sunrise. Mac looked up, and for one breath he allowed himself to believe the flag waved solely for them – for every soul who had outlasted darkness.

He turned to Chalky. “Ready?”

Chalky nodded. “Step by step, inch by inch.”

They walked on, two silhouettes lengthening toward a horizon washed clean, planning not for glory or vengeance, but for bread, letters, and the fierce, ordinary labour of living in peace.

The End

On 15th August 1945, Japan’s formal surrender marked the end of the Second World War in the Asia-Pacific, a conflict that had lasted for over six years and affected more than 100 million people across continents. The announcement triggered spontaneous celebrations in cities like London, Sydney, and New York, whilst millions of servicemen and civilians prepared to rebuild lives disrupted by war. Over 17 million military personnel and civilians in Asia perished during the hostilities, and thousands of Allied prisoners of war were liberated from Japanese camps after years of brutal captivity. The war’s conclusion initiated a period of reconstruction and the start of decolonisation throughout Asia. Today, the events of VJ Day are recognised for precipitating geopolitical shifts and accelerating movements toward peace, international cooperation, and human rights across the globe.

Bob Lynn | © 2025 Vox Meditantis. All rights reserved. | 🌐 Translate