At a time where we see our communities pulling together against the Coronavirus, we can reflect and compare our own situation with some of the challenges this wartime generation faced. This earlier generation made it through the fighting at the front, the bombs, the rationing of food and materials, the grief and loss of loved ones either serving in the armed forces or killed on the home front, and supported one another through it all. We can learn a great deal from their memories and their fortitude in such adversity. Today we remember the relief of that generation at the end of a long 5 year war that was experienced by this generation 75 years ago today.
‘Well I don’t think any of us for one moment thought we wouldn’t win, I don’t think it ever entered our heads. When you look back on it, it was certainly touch and go!
You just saw more and more Airforce and there would be convoys, Army convoys. As I say we lived in Goldington Road and I remember on one day there was a convoy. It started near the rugger ground and it parked at the side of the road and there was about two or three miles of it and it just parked up for about six hours. I know mother was busy making tea, providing them with tea. The particular ones that came into our house were Canadians - well she was running a cafeteria from the kitchen.’
Mr. John Crawley, a young man living in Bedford
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| V.E. Day Street Party Acacia Road Bedford, Photograph courtesy of Mr. M. J. Darlow. |
‘We were given holidays straight away and then we celebrated in the town of course, in Ampthill. We had a dance on the Market Square and that was good. If you had a dance on the Market Square now nobody would go and dance but in those days you just did and we were doing the Palais Glide and the Hokey Cokey, everything you can think of, the Lambeth Walk, the old and young, they were all in. I couldn’t dance at that time but everybody was on there having a whale of a time.
We had records. It was Andrew Underwood’s father, he was good, he had that sort of shop, an electrical shop and he wired it all up, all these loudspeakers and that. We all lent records to be played and that’s how it went on. We had a lovely time and then at the end they all did the Conga down the streets. I’VE never forgotten it. I mean everybody was so relieved and happy - they thought it was the War to end Wars. It was a lovely feeling really because you’d had five years of war and it was just, well, marvellous!
Mrs. Mary Smith (née Sharpe), then working at Elstow Ordnance Factory
‘At the end of the war, when my mother and our neighbour and her daughter and I heard the end had come, we rushed down to the river to celebrate with all the Forces, and I remember people climbing lamp posts. Sybil and I were singing, ‘Let him go, let him tarry, let him sink or let him swim’ which was a hit at the time. We went down to the river, across the Suspension Bridge to Russell Park and all the WAAFs and Americans and Forces were dancing and going mad.’
Mrs. Patricia Ingray (née King), a schoolgirl living with her family who had evacuated to Bedford
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V.E. Day celebrations - Dancing in Russell Park, Bedford 8th May, 1945
© Bedfordshire and Luton Archives Service (The Bedford Times Collection)
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‘It was totally uneventful. We were operating the next day very early bringing back prisoners, so it was an early night to bed, that was it! That was my V.E. Day! We went to Lübeck and brought them back to somewhere or other. We brought them back over the cliffs of Dover.’
Serviceman’s experience of V.E. Day, Mr. Reg Cann, then Navigator 1, 582 No 8 (PFF) Group, Little Staughton Airfield
‘The thing that upset my education was V.E. Day, because I was just about due to take Higher School Cert(ificate) that June and July and I was in the middle of swotting and it wasn’t really conducive to heavy swotting, that sort of thing.
At the beginning of the war, probably 1940, Mrs. Fowler bought a large tin of fruit salad and she said, ‘I’m not touching that! We are going to have that when the war is over!’ And it stayed in their larder for four and a half years until 1945 when they did have a little tea party in the back garden with Mr. and Mrs. Lamb from next door. They opened this tin of fruit salad and it had fermented – it was delicious, it really was. It was like having fruit in alcohol and everybody got drunk on fruit salad! Really, we finished up rolling about. We had cream with it of course that came from Stevington!
V.E. Day I remember because of the parades. I think that the Bedford Modern Cadet Force opened their armoury and took out all the thunder flashes, as I’m sure did our Army Cadet Forces. The ATC, I mean you couldn’t do anything, you’d only got morse tappers! But they were marching down The Embankment throwing thunder flashes into the crowd or throwing thunder flashes down on the road and putting dustbin lids on the top. They were walking down and banging dustbin lids together to make a good noise. If you put a dustbin lid over a thunder flash it went at least 15 feet into the air and then you had to dodge it coming down. And we finished up having a parade through town. I think in the school mag there was a photograph of the parade, I remember Johnny Stockton was in it. There was a large white flag with a big letter ‘O’ in the middle that somebody had run up.’
Mr. Alan Lock, an evacuee with Owen School. London to Bedford
The memories shared above were donated to the museum’s BBC People’s War archive, project funded by the National Lottery Heritage Fund. This project aimed to collect local individual’s valuable insights about the war before they were lost. Thank you to all the participants who shared their stories to this project, to Ann Hagen (previous Keeper of Social History) and Jenny Ford (Oral Historian) who curated this archive for future generations to enjoy.
Written by Lydia Saul, Keeper of Social History
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