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Early Days in the Cold War

© Bill Waller

The words “the Cold War” conjure up a time, years of time, when people lived in constant fear of a nuclear war, and any war or conflict was seen as a possible cause of one starting. At the end of the Second World War in Europe, on 7th May 1945 (American/British version) and 8th May (Russian and now the official last day), I, at age 11, was conscious only of a great relief that no longer did we need to fear bombs, doodle-bugs, or rockets, each of them causes of fear and terror in different ways. I and some members of the family went into London that night and what a night! The noise and bonhomie were enormous and I watched as grown-ups did the craziest things. We all went down to cheer the King and Queen, whose tiny figures I could just see on the balcony of Buckingham Palace. But even for me, used as I was to reading at least some part of the Daily Mirror (I was soon to be told by the English master at the grammar school that I started to attend in September that the Daily Mirror was for people who could see but not read) and the Daily Telegraph (a much better paper, said the same teacher), there was a feeling that all was not right, and that the reason for this was Stalin and Russia.

I knew little about Russia and can only remember the publicity given to the production by Wilkinson Sword Company of a sword called the Sword of Stalingrad, presented to the people of Stalingrad for their resistance to the Germans. If I had any feeling at all about them, it was of some remote beings who were all big and used a very odd type of script, instead of the alphabet. It soon became evident, however, that people around me were becoming anxious about the Russians, who were not acting in the way that they should, but were forcing many countries into Communism. Until the outbreak of the Korean War in 1950, that word meant those earnest people standing in streets calling out “Get the Daily Worker now” and getting little response; it was understood that they were a slightly deranged group. The Korean War changed all that. I had just started work and was spending an appreciable percentage of my weekly wages in showing off by buying The Times, much of which I found unreadable but which had very good maps of the war zone and reports of battles, and I realized that Communists were real.