Not since the Coronation had that signal been made. For miles along the Firth the whistles of ships spat and screamed in a hundred keys. They spelled the words “Peace” and “Victory” and a half score others in international code. Someone sounded a ship’s bell, and within five minutes every bell in the fleet clanged out.
Sirens followed in a bellowing, howling medley of tones that must have carried miles to sea. The men of the fleet swarmed to the decks, brought pots, pans and tins, formed mighty snakes of human forms, shouting and cheering to the blare of trumpets, bugles and trombones they frolicked from stem to stern.
Darkness fell, but without effect except that the gloom was split by the rays of a thousand dancing searchlight beams. For miles the sky was light as day, as every searchlight afloat and ashore streamed upward to the heavens and was lost. Then from the bridge of every ship rockets and star shells burst their fire into the sky. Flares and “Very” signals covered the Firth with a bright red glow, as the deafening din continued.
Floating from every fighting top huge flags of the Allies fluttered in the breeze, standing out in the searchlight beams which focussed on them – banners of victory.
Bands could be heard above the shouting and the cheers, striking out one national anthem after another, with a fire they never have possessed before or since. For even the voices of men had lost their sanity.
