I'm 79, so obviously wasn't around in the war, just a few cells a few days after VE Day, when my Dad had leave. It was snowing in Dover when he came back from Belgium on leave. And were it not for a certain pair of bombs, he would have gone east to fight in the US's war.
But I grew up with the spoilage of war around. Bomb sites were common place, gaps in the rows of houses. There was rationing. I remember when sweets were no longer rationed, and I was old enough to be allowed to go to the shop and spend my sixpence freely. I didn't know why things took so long to put right, why the town of Dover had so many spaces for car parks and a ruined church, and Dartford where I taught, on the route to fly to Vickers factory, had large swathes of unpaved space unused for anything better. I don't expect many Americans grew up with the accounts of V1s so that if a plane went over to practice cutting out its engine, they automatically looked for somewhere to duck into a ditch. Mr Vance was lucky not to have the realities of war so immediately.present as he grew up.
And we were grateful for the help of the US.
But I didn't know why things took so long to be put right.
I didn't know that for nearly all my working life, a chunk of the taxes that left my salary before I even saw it, as it did from all the workers here, to pay off the debt we owed the US. Not till 2006, when the government announced that the debt was clear. That was money that could have been spent on putting things right, but was owed and quite properly paid off, so you could have a wealthier country.
We paid you, Mr Vance, Mr Hegseth. That's not freeloading. That's honest dealing with a debt.
Your investments have gone up recently, at the same time as my pension investments have gone down. What's that?