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This story was submitted to the People's War site by Chris Foord of the Greenwich heritage Centre on behalf of Pat and Tony Fawcett and has been added to the site with their permission. The authors fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

Pat.
Preparations were being made in our street for a great street party and when the great day came, May 8th, we were ready. Some of the ladies had been collecting money towards the party and quite a sum was available. Pieces of old sheeting, always white in those days, were transformed by red and blue ‘Dolly’ dyes, hurriedly bought from Potter’s the oil shop. These were then cut into zigzags and the resulting triangles were sewn in red, white and blue order, onto long tapes to be draped across the street. My Mum and her sewing machine, worked away busily and I, and my sister Janet, were allowed to help too. Flags came out from nowhere and were proudly hung from every available point. Peace was really here!
In Frances Street, outside the ‘Britannia’ pub, just in front of the brick air raid shelter, a platform was erected, duly decorated in bunting. On this loudspeakers were mounted and happy music filled the air. A few days later, more sheets were transformed into table cloths, draped on trestle tables borrowed from the school hall, and jellies, blancmanges, fairy cakes and sandwiches were proudly brought from every house. The ‘Street Party’ was on and we children were having the time of our lives.
We dressed up. My sister was wrapped in the versatile white sheet, as Britannia, with a papier-mâché helmet. My cousin Marie was the Statue of Liberty, wearing a spiky paper headdress, and I was Russia. I had on my Auntie’s bright yellow blouse, and black bolero, and a skirt made out of a Russian flag. We danced, we sang, we watched the huge bonfire with Hitler’s effigy burning away, and we were ecstatically happy that the war was over — at least in Europe it was.
But somehow, there was something that was spoiling the happiness for me. Other people’s sons, brothers, husbands and fathers would soon be coming home, but my Dad would not.
My Dad had been in the Royal Navy, since he was a, twelve year old boy sailor, at Greenwich Naval School and later on he had volunteered to serve in submarines. His fight for freedom had been fought under the sea, and he and his shipmates had paid the extreme sacrifice. Though, for a long time, I kept hoping and dreaming that he would come home, I knew I would never see him again.

Tony.
We lived in Frances Street, Woolwich, close to the Britannia public house, situated at the junction with Chapel Hill. In front of the pub was a brick built surface air raid shelter, with a reinforced concrete flat roof. My friend Basil lived in the ‘Brit’ and together we decided to build a gallows to hang an effigy of Hitler, the mastermind behind the deaths of so many. Timber beams from one of the many bombed sites provided the material, and old clothes stuffed, made our body. My Father drew a fair likeness of Hitler, which we attached to the head. The gallows, complete with hangman’s noose around Hitler’s neck, was fixed at first floor level to the ‘Brit’ frontage, for all to see.
There it remained until the bonfire, which took place in the natural (triangular) square at the junction of Chapel Hill, Eustace Place, and Frances Street. With the gallows in the centre, a plentiful supply of wood was arranged around it. All over Britain, similar fires were to be lit, to celebrate the Nazi defeat. And what a bonfire that was! It lasted well into the small hours. All over London the sites, where fires had been lit on the roads, showed large areas of burned tarmac, but who cared?
That was the start of the celebrations. Each street in the area started with a tea party for the children. Trestle tables covered with sheets, with long benches each side, were placed in the centre of the road, the traffic being diverted. Goodies that must have been hoarded for months appeared. Sandwiches of all sorts, cakes, jellies, blancmanges — it could not have been from the black market, surely? The children had a fantastic party in the afternoon, but in the evening it was the turn for us older people — I was well over fifteen at the time!
The shelter in front of the ‘Brit’ became the backdrop of a stage made from scaffold poles and boards. With the piano from the pub, and a few other instruments, a ‘band’ was assembled to provide music to dance to. There was also an amplifier rigged up for anyone wishing to sing. There was one young girl, whose voice was similar to Vera Lynn’s and she was in great demand at all the street parties, singing the favourites of that time. The pub did a roaring trade, as did the fish and chip shop opposite, staying open until quite late.
Happily for us youthful types, the parties did not all occur on the same day. All we had to do was to look to see which street was having a stage erected, then we knew when and where the next one was to be. The ‘Hokey-Cokey’, ‘Knees Up Mother Brown’, ‘There’ll always be an England’, they all remind me of those far off days when I knew we would not have to dive into the air raid shelter again.

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