The road was narrow and I had to draw in my elbow when vehicles came the other way. It was strange sitting in the passenger’s seat as Harding drove on the left-hand side of the road. Every car and truck seemed to come within inches of us, and there was nowhere to pull over. Hedges ran along both sides of the road, and where there were buildings they came right up to the edge. Why the hell did the Brits have to drive on the wrong side? And why these skinny roads? We drove on into London, the road widening a bit but still not enough for two trucks to pass each other with more than inches to spare. Lorries. That’s what they’d told us the Brits called trucks. We had been briefed in OCS on language differences and how to make nice with the Brits. Don’t flash your money around, GIs are paid more than British officers, stuff like that. Me, I couldn’t have cared less. The English had had their time in the sun when they conquered Ireland and ran it like their private preserve, killing and starving out my ancestors. If I hurt a few feelings waving around a sawbuck or two, big deal.

Harding didn’t point out the sights on the way to the hotel. Some of those sights were piles of rubble where apartment houses and office buildings used to be. The Blitz hadn’t been as bad as it had been the previous year, but the place was still a target. As we passed by a row of white-painted brick houses with a gap like a missing front tooth in a wide grin, I caught sight of a river that I figured was the Thames. A pile of blackened rubble covered the ground between the houses, weeds creeping over the remains of the unlucky home. We turned a corner and had to stop as workers in blue coveralls hauled bricks away from a smoldering pile of debris that had slid out into the street. People going to work walked around the mess, carrying their newspapers, umbrellas, and briefcases as if it were completely normal to walk past bomb-damaged buildings. Shops across the street had OPEN FOR BUSINESS painted on wood planks nailed over shattered windows.