The world now looked very different and the jubilation with which I had anticipated my return to civilian life faded. I decided to take stock, contemplating the future and looking back over the past. What difference had the last six-and-a-half years made to me? I believe that the army life had hastened or indeed was responsible for my conversion from a youthful naïve romantic into a mature cynic. The grateful country offered university education to its returning servicemen but I was coming up to 28 and didn't fancy another four years on a meagre income. I was not earning much before the war and although I had trade pay and an overseas allowance when I left the army, I was far from wealthy. Some firms made up their employees" pay to the level of their civilian pay but mine didn't. I opted to continue working initially with my old firm and let the future unfold as it would but I was already thinking of that beautiful country still in my memory, South Africa. I applied for a job there and was given an interview and a medical and I was accepted. However I was told to wait until a future date when I would be contacted again with travelling arrangements. Funnily enough the representative's parting remark was, "I hope you're not like that other Bristol chap I interviewed, when we contacted him he didn't reply." However history did repeat itself, I met my future wife, changed my address and forgot to advise him of the new one. In the aftermath of the war I got to thinking and wondering; I had never been in a tight spot and tested; true I had been in the Plymouth and Bristol blitzes but so had 1000's of civilians. I don't think I was any more or less scared than others, probably I was average. I would like to have known just how I would have measured up had I been in a more military action but fate decreed otherwise. I shall never be certain now but if I consider myself to be average I can always be persuaded that I would have acquitted myself as well as anyone else. I got to wondering too why I had survived six-and-a-half years in the army and emerged unscathed and in one piece when so many others who had joined the forces long after me were now dead or maimed. This has often led to slight feelings of guilt, particularly at armistice-day parades.