I knew my Dad went out for pint in the local on a Saturday night and my Mum liked a Guinness – she believed the advertising that it was good for … We would just like to say “thank you”. Later on in my life, my wife Betty, who passed away last year, would tell me about how she had been at Piccadilly Circus on VE Day and of the happy Londoners and American soldiers all celebrating together.I was evacuated from London when I was 14 and sent to Exeter, before joining the Army in 1943. We had to push ourselves forward and look towards another day.The VE Day street parties were the biggest spontaneous national celebration Britain had ever seen. Every time it shocked me, seeing parts of the city completely flattened.After college, I spent another year in training then was sent to India in 1946. News On Demand And this, the 75th Anniversary of VE Day, the marking of the greatest sacrifice made to ensure our freedom, is one of those days. Disney+
I fought in France, Belgium, Luxembourg, Holland and Germany, but the Japanese must have heard I was coming and surrendered before I was sent out there! Abbots Lodge, July 1942 (Photo: Ursula Radford) On VE Day the school walked us up to the top of ‘Little Hangman,’ a hill outside Coombe Martin, and we celebrated the occasion with singing on … It was low key but a poignant end to wartime. We’d had no contact with the outside world for 30 hours – even the windows on the train had been boarded up to protect us from German fire.To hear about the VE Day celebrations the day before, I felt so glad the war had ended – and a bit cross I’d missed the party, although a fuss was made of us by the local people who were still rejoicing.I travelled on to London and heard all about the street parties, which sounded absolutely wonderful. There was no money for big celebrations but there was excitement after five years of terrible wartime. But then I realised that we’d finally be able to get nice things to eat again – a typical teenage-boy thought!I heard the news while walking the seven miles from college to Reading with six of my friends, because we didn’t have enough money for the bus.
I was 17 and about to leave the Army Apprentices College near Reading to become a fully signed-up soldier. He was posted in Hong Kong, so I had to wait until the war in Japan finished for him to come home.At the same time as all the joy, I was nervous – I think most people were, wondering what was going to happen next. It was only afterwards that I realised what I’d been part of.After VE Day, I was posted to Washington, to the Pentagon, to carry on my work there until the war ended in August 1945.I was a very shy little girl but my mother insisted I do a ‘turn’ during my road’s VE Day street party. VE Day memories: Tears, laughing, singing – the day the fighting ended May 3, 2020 This Friday marks 75 years since Winston Churchill announced the end of the war in Europe and people took to the streets to rejoice with victory parades, parties and music. I had no memory of life before the war, so seeing people singing, dancing and being so happy was a new experience.I spent the early years of the war living in the local workhouse. On Demand ‘When it comes down to it, there’s nothing better than a street party.’At 25, I was based in Bovington, Dorset, at the Armoured Fighting Vehicle School. We specialise in the written word and capturing memories. Cakes were made with dried egg, milk, liquid paraffin from the medicine cabinet and homemade jam. I suppose in the end I realized that my Mum had been ‘tipsy’ (the rather charming euphemism then in use for being completely plastered) and that probably everyone else had been tipsy, too. My father was a factory worker, so my elder sisters were sent to live with an aunt and I went to the workhouse as a baby. Strikes, IRA bombs and the Yorkshire Ripper dominated headlines, yet that summer ‘we had the largest number of street parties ever,’ says Gittins – 12,000 in all.Since then, we’ve had street parties for the weddings of Charles and Diana in 1981, and William and Kate in 2011.
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