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Transcription of a Group Session held at Medway Archives and Local Studies Centre, 23 February 2005. Part Three

NC: Can we turn our thoughts now to the end of the war. Can you remember any celebrations for VE Day, VJ Day or VC Day. There were some blank faces when I mentioned the latter. Apparently there was a national celebration and parade a year after the end of the war. It鈥檚 obviously something that hasn鈥檛 stuck in the general memory.

ET: I rode to London with a girlfriend to Leicester Square and Trafalgar Square and I remember we were all singing and dancing absolutely packed tight. I remember sitting in a ring on the ground with some sailors. Then we were picked up by some American soldiers who took us up to the Rainbow Club wherever their centre was and kept putting us up on the windowsill. Lyons Corner House always figured in everything in those days. 1/6 return to London by workmen鈥檚, 1/6 breakfast 鈥� kipper, toast and tea. That was VE Day, that was the big celebration.

VT: We had street parties. By that time my daughter was nearly two. Everybody had been saving their bits and pieces of rations for weeks knowing that there would be some celebration and we lay all the tables out. We had a big banner 鈥淭hank God We Saved Them鈥� or something like that on it and we all contributed a few sandwiches or made a few cakes. We made trestle tables up, the whole street came together and dressed the kids up in red white and blue. It was great time, there was great friendship. We could leave the doors open and people ran in and out borrowing a cup of this or that. We took all morning to lay the tables and arranged races for the kids. We got the kids into bed by about 8 o鈥檆lock at night and then we had a piano in the street and got some beer and the parents celebrated until late. It was a lovely happy occasion and we let our hair down.

JP: I remember my husband to be saying 鈥淵ou had better make your mind up quickly or they are going to be sending nursing sisters out East鈥�. Of course the war with the Japanese was still progressing. Three weeks after that we were married in Antwerp. But VJ Day, I must have an had some leave and I was in London and I saw the celebrations there and people were really letting their hair down. I saw the Royal Family come out on the balcony.

NC: Vi, weren鈥檛 you in Bexley Heath at that time.

VT: Welwyn, that area.

NC: They had a bomb on the trolley bus station.

ET: Gillingham bus depot was hit. My husband had to go and shut the electricity off. They lost four drivers and 74 buses that night. In fact our little area we had 20 dead that night. That鈥檚 around the bus depot and Woodlands Road and the High Street.

BA: A bomb landed next door but one to us in School Avenue. It was an air raid warden that was killed.

ET: I cannot remember now, I can remember some individual cases that I went out to. I remember in Carlton Avenue, a woman, baby and a 16 year old girl next door. Balmoral Road was a 76 year-old woman and I went out to Mrs Yale, Milburn Road, she had four children, there was nothing of her. There was also a woman and her 18 year-old daughter and her 4 year old son on the lower road, Medway Villas at the back of Medway Road. They all get muddled up now in my mind.

BA: There were drink parties and everyone was out. It was double British Summer Time and we were allowed to stay up a little later in School Avenue (near Barnsole Road School) .There was only one row of houses because there was a plantation opposite.

VT: Like Dickens said, it was the worst of times, it was the best of times. Happy memories. Friends you made. Totally different from today.

ET: You were thrown into close proximity with other people, sleeping in shelters with other people. Later in the war you couldn鈥檛 get makeup or hairpins or combs or things like that.

BA: I can remember my sister having the old iron tongs that were heated up on the gas fire.

VT: I can smell the smell of singing now!

ET: Burnet matchsticks to put my eyebrows in. Being blond I had blond eyebrows. Used to light a match and let it cool down, then put your eyebrows in. Seam up your leg for your stockings. Then we found this marvelous new thing 鈥� nylons. The Americans had them. You had to send to Gibraltar for them and you had to send a guinea which was alot of money then, as you only earned about 拢3 a week. And they sent them to you folded up in a magazine, because they weren鈥檛 really allowed to send them to you. They were glass nylons, very orangey and shiny and you put them on and they laddered straight away.

VT: 15 bob (shillings) rent we paid for our first flat, then we rented a house and that was 拢1 a week.

ET: When war broke out, my husband earned 拢2 17s 6d a week and our mortgage repayment was 拢1 5 s and then you had rates on top of that 7/6, and people talk about being hard up now days!

VT: Mind you, you just have to add two noughts to everything now days.

RA: At the end of the war I was at Hamburg. We thought we would be staying the other side of Hamburg for a while and then going into Denmark and we thought great, but half way through June they said we were moving to Berlin. I was attached to the Desert Rats, though I hadn鈥檛 been in North Africa, and the powers that be said that they were the people who should go to Berlin, so we went up to Spandau in Berlin. We had to muster near Brunswick outside Hamburg and we went up the autobahn, all the lorries etc. When we got Elbe the Russians were there and they wouldn鈥檛 let us across. There were two bridges and they would not let us cross there. So we went to another bridge and we got so far and we were stopped again. In the end we did get to Spandau and it was devastated, absolutely devastated. The first thing we noticed, there were old people and young children trying to clear the place up with their bare hands. We weren鈥檛 allowed to help them, which was really terrible.

I wanted to come home for VE or VJ Day, but we had a good party in Berlin. Later in the year in October we had Victory Dinner and I still have the menu which I got all the lads to sign. Then they were all talking about being de-mobbed of course. In those days you all wrote to your MPs 鈥� I lived at Higham at the time because I wasn鈥檛 married then and I have the letter that I got in reply. He was Gary Alligan and its dated 9 December 1946. 鈥淚 share your display at the Government鈥檚 action on demobilization. I have already made representation on the letter. I got an official reply that is impossible to dispute was that the rate of demobilization that was announced last year was based on the assumption that the international situation would improve whereas we are ensured that there is no such improvement and it is essential in the national interest to keep a larger force under arms than was anticipated. This may be right but in my opinion it is unfair this unexpected responsibility should be born by the men who have been in the service for so long already and you can rest assured that I will not rest efforts to secure an improvement.鈥� I thought that was a good reply. I didn鈥檛 get de-mobbed then until 1947.

Here is a menu of a dinner we had Christmas 1945, roast turkey, roast pork, stuffing, roast potatoes, boiled potatoes, green peas, gravy, Christmas pudding and custard. Marvellous, the best meal we had since I joined the Army.

Just to go back, when we landed in France, Caen was devastated. We went right up to Belgium and Holland to Arnhem. I didn鈥檛 reach Arnhem, but I got to Nijmegen. We couldn鈥檛 go any further, we got stopped. From Caen, when we saw the Stirling bombers they came in so low so they could hit their targets. But so many of them got shot down it was heart-breaking. The next bad place was Arnhem where they shot down the gliders. We got into Germany and we were going to cross the Rhine, but the bridges were blown up so they had to put pontoon bridges up. But the enemy was floating mines down and we had to fire at the mines to blow them up before they blew up the bridges. Only one lorry could get across at one time. When we went further into Germany we saw big sheds around the factories where they kept the workers. The stench was wicked and they had men, women and children in there, hundreds of them, and children were born in there. It was terrible and some people say it didn鈥檛 happen but it did.

Coming back from the end of the war we thought we would get out straight away, but we didn鈥檛! In the end we had quite a good time really. In the end we did help the people even though we weren鈥檛 allowed to as that was fraternization. We used to get a good feed sometimes in the Winston Club in Berlin. When Churchill came for the Victory Parade, he opened the club and they named it that (might still be there!). When you wanted something to do, you could go into Berlin and they used to let us drive the trams. We got to know quite a few people out there.

JP: In France and Germany, cigarettes were a currency.

RA: The Germans had nylons, fully fashioned, because I sent my girlfriend some from Berlin.

ET: We had silk stockings before that and if they laddered we had a little hook and we used to spend evenings mending them.

RA: Berlin was devastated. Hitler used to say, Berlin would never be bombed. I went to the Reichstag when we got there. Of course we had problems with the Russians because they destroyed everything. They had come in from the East and met resistance from the soldiers with anti-tank guns in the windows and they just blew up these high-rise apartment blocks. This is a piece of marble that I got from the Reichstag as a souvenir.

ET/VT: A lot of souvenirs have disappeared down the years. You realize now how important it would have been to keep a diary.

ET: My uncle went into a POW camp when they liberated Belsen, and he said you cannot describe it. He said the one fear that the German guards had there was that the Russians would get there first and tear them to bits. They wanted the Americans or the English to get there first. My aunt said for weeks and weeks when he came out of the army, he would get up at night and walk for miles and wouldn鈥檛 talk to anyone for days. He said no way in your mind could you imagine what it was like, nobody could convey it to you the first time they went in.

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