Lest we forget
On May 9, 2020, I drove down an eerily quiet M11 to visit my dad. My mum had died a couple of weeks earlier so I felt justified making the journey. When I got to the house, I found he had strung our collection of camping site pennants across the front of the house as makeshift bunting for VE Day.
I couldn’t go into the house so we went down to the bottom of the garden where my parents had a kind of summerhouse they had created to look like an old railway station house.
I’d never spoken to Dad about VE Day so I took the opportunity to ask him what he remembered.
He would have just turned 10 when the end of the war was declared. The news meant his father would finally return home. He had joined the RAF Volunteer Reserve at a fair in spring 1939 and was one of the first to be called up.
Dad’s family lived in Poole and he experienced regular bombing raids. At one point an incendiary landed outside the dining room window and the house caught fire.
He had vivid memories of playing in the street one day when he and his friends saw a German JU88 with a Spitfire on its tail. One of the engines had caught fire and it was coming down. The stricken plane crashed into a shop at the end of the street.
You knew a row was bad when my parents descended into who had it worst during the war. At the beginning of the war Dad’s family didn’t have an air raid shelter. They would go next door when the siren sounded because the house had stairs so they all hid in the understairs cupboard. Eventually they were given a Morrison shelter, which they slept on top of in the dining room, and then went into when the siren went.
At some point around 1942 the family moved to the Midlands to be near where Grandad was stationed. They lived on a farm with no gas, electricity, or proper drainage. They pumped water from a well each day and Dad was expected to do farmwork before going to school. They returned to Poole in 1943 when Grandad was sent to the Azores.
News of the German surrender came in the afternoon of VE Day. The children helped to collect wood and rubbish to build a bonfire at the end of the road. The mum of one of dad’s best friends found some fireworks which had been bought for November 5th 1939 but never used. Grandma and others made a spread of food and some neighbours played piano accordions while they all sang.
People glamorise the Second World War. But it was harsh and terrifying. There wasn’t enough to eat and my grandmother would barter for food. The family joke was that Grandma was a brilliant cook (her cakes and biscuits were always something to look forward to) but she couldn’t do anything to make whale taste good.
This week there’s been terrible news from Gaza and Kashmir and the war continues in Ukraine. So many children face terror, loss of family, disrupted schooling, and lack of food and medicine. A former colleague of mine wrote this week about his attempts to get a family out of Gaza and it makes for distressing reading. I don’t understand why these situations are allowed to happen.
A YouGov poll this week said many Americans and Western Europeans believe a third world war is likely in the next five to 10 years. We need to work together to make sure that doesn’t happen.
