The correct answer and what I most clearly determine from the story setting of Chinua Achebe's "Civil Peace" (1971) is that C. The story takes place right after a war.
While the first few words "Happy survival" may sound misleadin and indicate that the story takes place before or in the middle of a war, in fact there are far more elements that indicate that the story is set after the war. It is said that these words were more than just "a current fashion of greeting old friends in the first hazy days of peace". This implies that the other character is not wishing that the narrator survives the war, but is in fact "congratulating" him for his survival after the war ended.
The narrator even states that "He had come out of the war with five inestimable blessings"
So it is safe to sya that the correct answer was C. The story takes place after a war, probably inspired by the Igbo survival of the Nigerian Civil War, also known as the Biafran War
