The old couple stood there for a second before two of the workmen gingerly took hold of them and tried to push them away – probably more for the pair’s own protection than out of loyalty to the state – but they were too late: the soldiers were already jumping from the back of the screeching armoured cars. At that, the workers slunk into the background – they could predict what was coming next. Seeing the soldiers’ arrival, the young man also realized it was time to leave, placing his camera in his coat pocket before quietly but rapidly walking away. He didn’t see one of the soldiers smack the butt of his pistol across the old man’s cheek and kick his legs away; or how, when the woman screamed, they hit her too. I, however, winced with each blow.

Between them, the two soldiers – boys no more than twenty – shoved the man from the platform down to the concourse of the square, and I felt another shiver of pain as his head connected with the ground. For a moment, no one moved: we all just watched him lie there, complicit in our inaction; and then, haltingly, he tried to push himself to his knees. But there was something impossible about his attempt – the lower half of his left leg had broken clean away and I realized that it wasn’t made of flesh, but of wood and metal, articulated at the knee: a product of the Blitz or a battlefield mortar.

One of the soldiers made a beckoning gesture across the square, and I looked around to see a tarpaulin-covered army truck burst into view. Four more soldiers scrambled out – their insignia showed them to be a sappers’ regiment – and surrounded the injured man as he tried to crawl off, with his broken false limb still dragging uselessly behind. He was thrown into their truck before the troops jumped in after him and I heard him cry out an indistinct word or two. I could do nothing except watch.

The woman was also pushed into the van, albeit less harshly, and, as soon as the vehicle’s wheels could turn, they careered on to the main road, leaving only a strange silence. It had all taken barely more than a minute.

The air was broken then by a new sound: a mocking, whining human voice. It was jeering, coming from the ranks of the Pioneers – just one boy at first, and then a few more joining in, until they were all doing it. One pretended to break his leg and hop in mockery of the man until their grinning CO quietened them down with a ‘That’s enough, now’ and had them return to their drilling. I walked away, my feelings about Liberation Day a little more subdued.