Not Easy to Smile

This Friday and Saturday is the 75th Anniversary of VE Day, Victory in Europe, in the closing stages of the Second World War.  8th May for most of us, but we should remember that the communities in the Channel Islands would have to wait a further 24 hours before being freed from enemy control on the 9th; every year since the islands have commemorated Liberation Day.

Preparing for VE Day at Pageant Road
COURTESY ANGELA EMERY

We had all been anticipating this date;  a similar experience every young child has from early December, waiting impatiently for Christmas to arrive.  With many staple foods in short supply householders had been saving a little at a time against the ration, and food and drink which would last for a long time, tins, powders, drink would be brought out in readiness for a celebration on the day. 

VJ Day street party in Elm Drive
COURTESY JENNY BOLTON

Most of the surviving film we will see on television this week  focused on the mass gatherings in city centres, but more people enjoyed themselves in their localities with their families and  children at street parties.  We know of such parties in Burnham Road, Castle Road, Woodland Drive, Cavendish Road and Longacres, but there are also likely to have been others.  Pianos, wireless radios and gramophones to provide music, chairs and tables borrowed from homes, local churches, and schools and other community buildings; food and drink pooled from home kitchens and brought to the centre of the parties in closed roads; and whatever decorations, bunting and messages could be mustered in the hours beforehand.

These were the brief days of huge relief after six years of everyone's world being turned upside down.  Men serving in the forces, many of whom not returning, families sent to where the war-footing work was; families broken with children evacuated – mums too;  shortage of most materials, including food, and therefore ongoing management of ration books and points.  Many contended with other adults or children billeted in our homes; the frequent fear of being bombed and alerted perhaps in the middle of the night by sirens; living a transient life in shelters.

Bomb damage Selwyn Estate 1944
COURTESY HERTS ADVERTISER

On VE Day the over-riding feeling was relief, all of that was now in the past.  It was over.  Except that it wasn't.  Life wasn't going to return to the peaceful and normal pre-war days.  Rationing would continue until 1954; troops would only return gradually, battles had still to be fought,  the economy was bankrupt, we were persuaded to save everything we could.  Bombed out towns and cities had to be re-built, housing was in acutely short supply, and most products from factories were reserved for export.

Yes, over time, our lives did improve and there was a new normal, moulded gradually over a generation.  On May 8th and 9th 1945 we could relax and look forward, although tens of thousands of families would be commemorating a loved one lost, perhaps with a candle in the window.  It was a brief interval before preparing ourselves for repairing and moving on.

This is a story for our times too; we are again looking forward to that brief interlude, a candle-lighting moment, before preparing ourselves for repairing and moving on.  May 8th and 9th will have more resonance to us this year than on any previous occasion.