VE DAY. Do you remember?

www.thenma.org.uk/what's-on/exhibitions/1945

The National Memorial Arboretum in Staffordshire will have a variety of events this year to commemorate the ending of the second world war, marking both VE Day and VJ Day.
It's well worth a visit.

Elrel - I missed out a thank you

Got distracted!

That’s a really nice story Elrel. Thanks for sharing.

Elrel

DH says he remembers there being street parties every time another serviceman returned from the war - whether there really were or not, I don't know. Sadly his father was not one of them.

Love that story, Elrel. Yes I remember the barrage balloons that we often saw overhead. I too was not impressed by bananas brought from Malta, I think, by an uncle. Crikey, 80 years have since passed!

A vivid childhood memory, I was five. My mother and I were living with my grandparents in a tiny unmade avenue of ten terraced houses off Pershore Road in Birmingham. There was an announcement on the wireless and all the grown ups were immediately very happy. The celebration was the next evening I think. A piano was pushed out into the middle of the avenue and a bonfire was lit. Flags appeared at windows and one lucky girl wore a red white and blue dress made for her sister for the coronation of King George in 1936. Grownups drank beer and danced, everyone sang ‘She’ll be Coming Round the Mountain’ I wondered who ‘she’ was. We drank ‘pop’ and ate baked potatoes from the bonfire. Poking about in the ashes next morning we found a forgotten potato which sadly was too hard to eat. It was a wonderful evening and I thought every day would be like this! VJ Day was disappointing as there was no street party. I had been told of ‘before the war’ which sounded great with treats I had never had such as bananas and balloons. My first banana came months later, it was all right but not as good as the occasional orange I had had during the war, I expected it to be more delicious! The first balloons
I saw (apart from barrage balloons in the sky) was brought to school by a girl about a year later, everyone wanted to know where she got it from. It was pink, huge, and so shiny. I thought all the fathers and uncles would come home straight away but of course they came gradually over the next months. One afternoon I came home from school to see a man I didn’t recognise waiting at the corner of the avenue. I whispered ‘I don’t remember him’ because I felt awkward, probably not the welcome he was hoping for. I did loved the big blonde doll Maria he had sent me from Italy. She had a lovely blue dress and came in two parcels. Her arms and legs arrived several days before her head and body!

VE day was DH's 10th birthday. He remembered everyone bringing their blackout curtains to burn on the town's bonfire.
He said it was the best birthday he ever had.
In France, 8th May is a bank holiday every year. We used to say we should have gone to live there so that he'd always have had a day off on his birthday.

We are celebrating with a garden party in my neighbour's garden One neighbour's Mum is 93 and I hope she'll have memories to share. I'm hping to make Victoria sponges!

My mother always boasted that all of Europe celebrated her birthday!

My mother was 15 and celebrated with many others by dancing around the clocktower in our local town.

I don’t remember anything about it, I was only two that year.

My parents took my sister and I to London with two neighbours. It was marvellous being in such a happy crowd cheering for the Royal Family and seeing lights after dark as that was the day the blackout finished.

My uncle, a radiographer with the Medical Corps, was in Burma with the Army when the prisoners were released from the Japanese camps. To the end of his life, he refused to speak of the horrors their imprisonment had inflicted on these survivors whose emaciated bodies he and his colleagues had to treat - as far as they were able. He never in later years would purchase any article made by Japan. I think VJ Day should be something to commemorate than to celebrate, not least because the deadliest weapons ever used - were employed to end this savage conflict.

I was four years old and remember the porters in our flats hosing the walls down. Tables set out for all us children to have sandwiches, jelly etc. Then a Punch and Judy show. We were in the middle of London and bomb damage was all around us.

https://www.gransnet.com/uploads/talk/202503/medium-gi02ci-fepows-1.jpg https://www.gransnet.com/uploads/talk/202503/medium-d50r1y-pows-15-aug-1945.jpg https://www.gransnet.com/uploads/talk/202503/medium-681ahs-robert-ingram-2876500-gordon-highlanders.jpeg

There are only a couple of people here who've briefly mentioned VJ day - thank you. What people don't remember or don't know is that the war did not end with VE Day. There were so many British, Australian and Dutch prisoners of war, for example, still stuck in camps in the likes of Singapore, Burma and Japan.
The basic story is that, once the Japanese surrendered on August 15th, 1945 and our men who had been imprisoned under horrendous conditions were "free", they didn't set out for home until September, October or even later. They were told not to make a fuss on arrival and were sent home by sea the long way round so that they had time to fatten up their emaciated bodies and not shock the happy population at home who had recently celebrated VE Day.
My own father who, like so many others, was there at the fall of Singapore and spent 3 1/2 years in captivity, was shipped out via the United States into California, then cross-country on a train into Canada, then by boat again into Liverpool and by train back home to Aberdeen. For gallant soldiers who were all so ill, this was ridiculous treatment when they could have been flown home directly.
But they were basically told, Don't rain on their parade (those at home elated at the end of the war in Europe), don't speak about the horrors in the PoW camps and on Death Railway, nor were they were given help in finding jobs or being treated for PTSD or the numerous tropical diseases many of them were still suffering from.
Churchill made errors in his tactical strategy against the Japanese and these, coupled with the treatment of those who survived to come home, have led me to despise him. He's not the big war hero he's been painted, people like my father were.

You paint a beautifully nostalgic picture of the VE celebrations. I was born in February 1951, so I missed those happy times.

I do remember having a dress for the new Queen's visit to Cardiff. It had the same smocking as you describe.

Born in Poland. No such celebrations there. End of the war meant that the country was unceremoniously and without scruples handed over on a plate to that murderous dictator from the east. Having fought valiantly the invaders from the west for 5 long years in own country and yours and suffered cruel murders, tortures and often total destruction Poland was abandoned. My mother, on her extended visits to Britain, often watched the televised celebrations past and current, tears streaming down her face. As the country was “liberated” another enslavement awaited. Only this time it was fully sanctioned. Let this reminder be a stark reminder and a warning in the times of further “problems” in that part of Europe.

I have a beautiful and cherished picture of my great grandparents celebrating this day. I wasn’t born but you can see the joy on their faces.

Well, I don’t think it is going to be meaningless to those born after the event. (Possibly to some, perhaps, but not to most).
That’s rather like saying Remembrance Day is meaningless because those who fought in the 1914-18 war are long gone, but of course, it isn’t.
Those of us born long after these events can still appreciate the importance of remembering them and what they mean. It’s essential that we do in my view.

I was five, and am surprised I don’t remember, because I remember earlier events during the war. I have no memory of it at all.

henetha

I remember VE day. I was eight years old. We had huge trestle tables set up in a nearby small park and everyone provided food, there was more than enough for us all. I remember being allowed to take some home.
A couple of days later there was a photo of our park party in the local newspaper. I kept a copy of it for many years, but somehow lost it eventually. I wish I could find it again.

If you contact the office of the newspaper that the photo was in, they may be able to help. I have done that before and it worked!

I was born 10 years after war, but dad served in India and Burma,my uncle was one of first troops into Germany and my mum lost her home in the Clyde blitz so yes grew up with it and I'm a very proud daughter.

I wasn't born then, but in 1995 we had a 50th Anniversary party at the City Hall in Truro. I was working on the bar and the whole thing was amazing. The Hall itself really hadn't changed since 1945 and everyone who came was dressed up, with quite a few in uniform. With the 40s music playing it really felt as if we had gone back in time, quite an incredible feeling. My favourite costume was a young boy who had come as a Spiv. He had the hat and the hairstyle, and when he opened his trench coat it was lined with nylons, cigarettes and knicker elastic! Brilliant!

Daisydaisydaisy

Hello there

Interesting post ... I wasn't born until 1965 to older parents 40 Mum ,Dad 48 who was a far East POW .Victory in Japan wasn't until September 1945 .My Dad died in 1976 when I was 11..I am "lucky "to have quite a few original documents as well as his Service records that I applied for through Gov.Uk
My Father was an alcoholic and an emotionally distant man,an uninterested Husband who My much older Sister hated !

Of course I will never understand fully what He went however My research with both ancestry and a Facebook group has been invaluable .😢

Daisydaisydaisy

Of course I will never understand fully what He went however
Your poor father probably went through hell and the consequences, as you have posted, were far-reaching, affecting him after the war and his family too.

I do remember a man whom my friend's parents knew who had been a Japanese POW. He had apparently survived by eating banana skins but was a broken man.

I was not born but I know how our soldiers gave their lives for us. We need know about the sacrifices that were made so we had freedom