´óÏó´«Ã½

V.E Celebrations

W Barber

´óÏó´«Ã½ Home Service Broadcast Tuesday 8th May

It was a lovely sunny day. I can remember we expected it to be the end because we knew that everything was going our way. The Russians were racing to Berlin and we were all so glad that it really was all coming to an end, and we couldn’t believe it. I can remember us standing around the radio just waiting for the news and Churchill’s speech, and it came at last.

My Mother and I danced up and down the room, we were so excited and pleased, and the children they used to sing a song my Father had, and the children were dancing around the floor singing, and the neighbours came in and so did the next door neighbour. She was glad because her husband would be home from the war, and we said we would have a party in the front garden.

My neighbour had dug her lawn up to grow potatoes but ours was still there so we said we would have it. Everyone brought tables and chairs. We had all the children with their Mothers and they brought all kinds of things, where it all came from we didn’t know, because there was so much food. Chocolate biscuits and ordinary biscuits and it was really a wonderful tea party.

On the shelf in my pantry I had a tin of salmon. Now of course you couldn’t buy salmon in England, but my cousins in Canada every now and again would send us a food parcel and always there was a linen bag full of sugar, the first tea bags we ever saw, tobacco for my Father, and sweets and a couple of tins of fruit and tins of meat and always a tin of salmon, sometimes two tins of salmon. One of these tins of salmon I would put on back shelf in the pantry, keeping it for my Mother’s birthday in July, but I thought I had saved the salmon for a special occasion and surely this was the most special occasion that you could every expect. I opened it and made a lot of tiny sandwiches, now quite a number of the children had never tasted salmon before and they loved it. It was such a special day, the day war ended so I didn’t mind using it up on that day.. In fact my cousins sent us another food parcel before my Mother’s birthday so we still had salmon for that day too.

Then we had games and we sang and danced around. It was amazing how after we heard the news of peace, the Co-op that morning had produced rolls of red, white and blue ribbon. Everyone was buying it. The little girls had it as ribbons in their hair and little boys had a bow in their button hole. I had got a Union Jack and I sewed it on the front of my daughter’s apron and she thought it was wonderful. They were tired out by tea-time and they all went to bed early.

There was my Mum and Dad and my husband and I sitting there talking, and someone knocked on the door and told us there was going to be a dance in the evening so my husband and I left the children with my parents and we went. There was no blackout that night — there were no fancy clothes, and we stayed until late. When we walked home and turned into the street, all the houses in the street had all the lights on, upstairs and downstairs, and no curtains were drawn and it was one of the most beautiful sights I had seen for a long time.

We got up the lane and there was a barrage balloon and there was a big hut there that the girls lived in because they looked after the barrage balloon, and about 12 months before, one of the German planes had bumped into the barrage balloon and crashed. The girls were having a wonderful time with all their friends and they deserved it.

My husband and I walked home with our arms around each other and it was a wonderful feeling it really was.

This story was submitted to the People's War site by June Woodhouse (volunteer) of the CSV Action Desk at ´óÏó´«Ã½ Hereford and Worcester on behalf of Mrs Barber (author) and has been added to the site with her permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

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