VE Day memories: The mixed emotions of joy and loss among those who survived

On May 8 1945, Peter Marshall, a 20-year old Wireless Operator on Lancaster bombers was on a training sortie. As they headed back to base, he was twiddling the controls of his radio set and came across the BBC Home Service. Suddenly, the music broke off for a special announcement – the war in Europe was over.

“I connected myself back into the aircraft intercom system and told the rest of my crew. We couldn’t believe it,” he recalled. “There was this incredible feeling, a sense that we had survived; we were live heroes instead of dead heroes.” Once they landed, the partying began. “We just opened the bar and everybody was boozing it up. Everyone was excited to be going home. But we were also wondering what we were going to do next.”

As a former RAF Tornado navigator, and now a best-selling author, I’ve been privileged to spend time with many Second World War veterans, supping tea – and occasionally red wine – as they relived their experiences. On the 80th anniversary of VE Day, almost all the brave men and women I interviewed have now died, but their memories live on.

On May 8, 1945, Prime Minister Winston Churchill had addressed the populace: “My dear friends, this is your hour.” Anticipating that his personnel may be tempted to celebrate a tad too enthusiastically, one senior RAF officer drily followed Churchill’s announcement with his own tannoy broadcast to his men.

“The station is now shut down, and you may go into Mildenhall to celebrate. Before you go, I am going to tell you that I am going out to each aircraft to lock them. Each and every one of them. I am going to put the keys in the safe and the safe keys will be in my pocket, so don’t try to get back to Australia – or anywhere else!”

VE Day is imprinted on the minds of those who fought and survived. Lancaster pilot Les Munro, an Aussie who had taken part in the famous ‘Dambuster’ raids, was on leave in London at the time. “The news just seemed to filter through the streets,” he told me. “People started to flood out – a mass of celebrating men and women, cheering, shouting, kissing each other. I think I kissed a few English girls that day! It was a totally amazing, very memorable day.”

Bomb aimer John Bell was on leave at home in Epsom, Surrey, with his wife Florence and their four-month-old daughter when VE Day was announced. He “borrowed” three huge signal rockets from the Air Traffic Control tower and ran straight out to the back garden and set them off. “It was a family occasion, with Florence and our daughter, who had been born on December 29, 1944,” he told me “We were overjoyed and relieved and I began to realise how lucky I was – I’d completed 50 ops and made it through. The war was over.

“When it had all started, we had no concept that we would be at war for over five years – I thought it would be over in months. I had been a schoolboy back then, but now I was a man. I had responsibilities and life had to go on but I had no idea what was ahead of me. So amidst the joy and relief, I certainly was thinking, ‘What next?’”

Amidst the joy and relief, the underlying mood could sometimes be subdued. As Flight Engineer Ted Watson, just 14 when the war had begun, celebrated with friends at a local pub, what struck him most was the end of the blackout. “We enjoyed at least a little lighting in the streets once more,” he recalled.

“The King gave a speech over the radio at 9pm, and the Home Service presenter described the floodlights at Buckingham Palace and the two great searchlights over St Paul’s Cathedral, creating an immense ‘V’ for Victory image in the sky.”

But his joy was not unconfined. “There were many families for whom it was a time of sad reflection and remembrance of loved ones lost,” he recalled. “For others the uncertainty surrounding the fate of the thousands of prisoners-of-war remained; and nor was it the end of the war. In the Far East the Japanese remained undefeated, and, unwilling to contemplate surrender, determined to fight to the last man.”

So perhaps inevitably, VE Day brought no closure for some, no inner peace. Elaine Shaw from Nottingham was 11 years old on VE Day, her beloved father Stan had served as an Air Gunner on bombers. “My first memories of my father are when I was around five, of him standing me on a table when he had friends around to play cards and getting me to swear to entertain the guests. It became a bit of a family joke.

“We didn’t have much money at all – I remember we seemed to live on onions! Boiled, fried, stewed – anything at all. But it was a very happy and settled life.”

As the war ended, she recalled how it had all begun. “I remember that the family sat around the radio listening to the Prime Minister when war was announced and my mother saying ‘Oh my God!’. It didn’t make much sense to me really, I didn’t know what it all meant or have any concept of how the news, and the war, would come to affect the rest of my life.”

In August 1943 Stan had managed a very brief, hour-long visit home between operations over Germany. Elaine remembers that, “he was in his uniform, and I walked back down to the bus stop on Pepper Street with him. As we waited for the Number 55 bus to arrive, he asked me to be a good girl and look after my mum and my baby sister.

“I was hoping the bus would be late, but all too soon it arrived. He climbed on board and sat down at a window seat so he could see me. I waved as the red bus pulled away and then stood for a few moments, just staring after it. Then I walked slowly back up the hill to my grandparents’ house, already looking forward to his next visit in a few weeks’ time, when I’d go back down the hill to meet him.”

She never saw him again. Stan was killed when his Lancaster was shot down during a raid on the V-weapons development centre at Peenemünde in Germany a few weeks later, his body was never recovered.

Elaine was 11 on VE Day. “There was bunting in the street, a huge party and joyful celebrations. There were tables of food and everyone had a wonderful time. But not us. My mother said we had nothing to celebrate. She was right, we didn’t,” she recalled. “And despite all the food, and the joy, I didn’t want to take part either – I remember standing at our gate, watching my friends enjoy the day, laughing, joking, celebrating victory and the end of that terrible war.

"They were with their parents, their fathers – and my father had gone. It didn’t feel like much of a celebration to me. My mother called me in and we sat quietly in the house. We had nothing to celebrate.”

Lancaster flight engineer Ted Watson was one of many who found the end of the war and subsequent civilian life challenging. “I started to have real difficulty sleeping as my subconscious began to replay some of my ops in a disjointed and irregular pattern. Nightmares of burning aircraft, fighters, searchlights, flak and the faces of men I had known all haunted my dreams.”

With time, the nightmares faded. “Today, I try to forget about the deaths and loss of friends. I try again to concentrate on the good times – that camaraderie, and living life to the full with close companions. We served our country together, and we did our bit. “Looking back now, I can say I enjoyed the war. It was dangerously exciting. We were young, we were idealistic, and we were doing something to protect our country from the scourge of the Nazis. I take pride in my small contribution to winning the war whilst flying Lancasters.”

Bomb aimer John Bell continued his RAF service until 1977. We became good friends and I was surprised when he told me he could “hardly remember the war being mentioned” during his subsequent service, though he remained immensely proud of his wartime role.

“It was an incredible period to be involved in the business of war, a time of huge change and development and achievement,” he said. “I do think about the death and destruction of course, but I still think it was the only way to win the war.

“It would never happen again like that, but you can’t use today’s standards and reasoning to judge the all-out war of seventy years ago.”

Sadly, none of the veterans in this story are now alive, and the numbers who survive are rapidly diminishing, so today as we mark their service and sacrifice, I will raise a glass in memory of that incredible generation. As time marches on it is unlikely that there will be many more celebrations like this so, on Monday, we had a commemorative tea party at home with family and friends where I read out some stories of those departed heroes.

We all stared skywards and offered a silent prayer of thanks that they were willing to make the ultimate sacrifice so that we can all be free today.

• John Nichol’s latest book, The Unknown Warrior: A Personal Journey of Discovery and Remembrance (Simon & Schuster, £22), is out now