VE Day memories
I was a five year old living in Stirling in a house which had no electricity. VE day was the first time that I was allowed to stay up till midnight. The street put on a party and I was enraptured by a string of electric lights that someone had strung up between the lamp-posts outside our house. It was only years later that I fully understood what had been celebrated.
VE Street Party - Waverley Avenue, Chingford, London
My mum, June Ward (seated 10th from the left in the furthest row), was 14 when this photo was taken at their VE day street party. My nan, Winifred Clark, is also in the photo (standing 4th from the left in the top row). The field behind the houses held a communal shelter where inhabitants would descend for the night from 6 pm, during the height of the bombings, arising in the mornings to find the street full of shrapnel. My mother's descriptions of walking to school and diving into a ditch when a V bomber's engine cut out above her head, continue to haunt me and remind me how fortunate my generation, and my children's generation, are to have lived through more peaceful times in our part of the world.
From my mother's journal, VE Day 1945
My mother kept a detailed diary and journal from when she was 15 in 1940. This is the journal entry for 8th May 1945. My mother and her friends were members of the Communist Party at the time, hence the comment about disparaging comments.
VE Day Street Party
My twin brother & I had a bran tub outside our house to collect money for our VE Day street party
The 1945 wartime diary of Edith Cowley
Monday 7th May 1945
VE day at last signed today
Mrs L bought me Yardley cream 10/6d. Oh Gosh! There were all sorts of rumours this afternoon. Great excitement! 3 o’clock news quoted Germans as announcing signing of ‘unconditional surrender’. Allied HQ confirmed this. Echo says ‘War in Europe over’. Got home in great flap and discovered that it is not VE day until Churchill announces it. Like a slap in the face that, sick with disappointment. Went to park with Podge got home and heard flash. Tomorrow is VE day. Churchill will speak at 3 o’clock and the King at 9. General Holiday for 2 days the bonfire and singing tonight was something we’ve waited 6 years to see.
Tuesday 8th May 1945
Went to church this morning Podge too. Went to 33 for tea. Geoff and Muriel were there too. Hear Winston Churchill at 3 o’clock. Victory ball in Reece’s was pretty awful. Crowds in town of course but no madness, just for fun sort of thing- plenty of drunks though. Came home in train- met awfully nice RAF boy going to Prescot. Didn’t stay at 33 as arranged Margie and Mrs M walked part way back with me. Bonfires not so good tonight.
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The Party continued in the small hours
VE celebrations in Eastville, Bristol.
Gloucester Street and Herbert Crescent.
All from my Grandfathers archive and that's him centre wearing what may have been my Grandmother's bloomers !
VE Day - A Soldier's View
This was written by my father-in-law for the 60th Anniversary of VE Day. He died in 2010:
'Ours was a somewhat different picture to those familiar ones we have seen on TV and in the Press - the excited crowd outside Buckingham Palace, the sea of faces down The Mall, servicemen dancing around with a pretty girl on each arm and all the pent-up joy and relief at the end of a grim, long war. It must have been wonderful to be a part of it.
I was a corporal in a Field Ambulance unit and in June 1944 we landed in Normandy. There followed ten months that none of us can ever forget.
The end of the war did not come as a surprise. By the time we had reached the Elbe, with the Allies advancing from the West and the Russians from the East, there was not much of Germany left to the Germans. The end was nigh, as you might say.
But there was a nagging thought at the back of our minds. We were part of The British Western Europe Force, or BWEF, which soon became known us as “Burma when Europe finishes”. The war against Japan was still in full flow, and it was widely feared that once we had finished in Europe, the Division would be shipped out to Burma.
So there we were, in a little German village just south of Kiel, when the news filtered through by word of mouth - “Have you heard? They’ve surrendered”. It was a very strange feeling - certainly nice to know that there were no longer chaps just over yonder who were trying to kill you. I can remember shaking hands with my two mates, Maurice and Naffy and a few others. Then it was back to our duties.'
Anthony (Tony) Platt
(1918 - 2010)
Street party celebrating VE Day
My mum, Joan Turner (née Wilkinson), is third from the right on the front row
Just another day?
My Dad, who recently died, worked on Post Office Telecommunications during WW2. In the last few years he had alzheimers, but before that I asked him what he did on VE Day. His response was that he went to work, came home, had his tea and went to bed!! My Mum, by contrast, was dancing on Hadley Common in High Barnet. Just thought it interesting that for some people it just seemed to be an ordinary day.
