VE Day 80 years on – by the veterans who were there
Eighty years after the unconditional surrender of Nazi Germany, people across the United Kingdom will once again mark VE Day. A service at Westminster Abbey will begin with a national two-minute silence of remembrance on Thursday. At 6.30pm, churches and cathedrals across the country will also ring their bells.
That hard-fought victory over the evils of fascism came at a tremendous cost, with nearly half a million Britons and Commonwealth forces losing their lives, including 70,000 civilians. Families were torn apart by the war and loved ones serving overseas rarely had the chance to return home on leave. On the home front, German bombing destroyed 500,000 homes.
Here are the stories of some of the brave young men and women who fought for our liberty, whether on the home front or overseas.
'I said to the German PoWs: Ich bin ein Juden. They didn't think Jews could be soldiers'
Mervyn Kersh, age 100
Called up on June 17 1943, at the age of 18, Mervyn was initially posted to the Royal Army Ordnance Corps (RAOC), as his impaired sight made him unsuitable for the infantry.
Mervyn's 17 Vehicle Company was set to land on D-Day (June 12 1944) and take charge of the first 1,000 vehicles to arrive. However, an advance reconnaissance party of 200 men, along with their commanding officer, Colonel Gore, were torpedoed on the second day of the landings. Only Col Gore survived, as the others were below deck at the time.
The call went out for volunteers at the company's concentration area in Biggleswade, Bedfordshire. 'There was a deathly hush, having heard their predecessors had just been blown up. Anyway, I did volunteer, and then others did slowly.'
Mervyn and the others set off by landing ship that night. They were woken at 5am, but it wasn't until the light began to break and Mervyn saw the outline of the French coast that the full reality of the situation sank in.
'That was the first time I really felt nervous. I could hear the heavy shells going from the shore to the big ships and from the big ships back to the shore. It was very frightening. I got out my book of Psalms and read a couple of them.' Mervyn placed the book in his breast pocket 'to act as a shield, [a trick] I'd heard from the First World War.
'All around me were other vehicles, other boats. It was an amazing sight. And it was a comforting thing anyway, to know that I wasn't that alone in the world.'
Mervyn and his driver disembarked down the ramp onto Gold Beach.
'The beach master was calling out, 'Keep going, keep going, others behind you!' We kept going straight on, didn't have a chance to really look around. I didn't see any bodies but I do remember seeing lots of vehicles abandoned and damaged.'
The company finally based themselves in Bayeux, where they remained until the Allies managed to break out of Normandy in August 1944.
'The Germans had been taken by surprise and pushed back. It took them two or three weeks to recover their organisation but, meanwhile, we were able to get thousands of troops to shore along with heavy equipment. That delay really cost them the war.'
By late summer, 200,000 German soldiers had been captured in Normandy. 'They were just slovenly, their jackets hanging open; they'd lost their hats and had no helmets, no weapons.' Mervyn would go up to them proudly saying, Ich bin ein Juden, 'I am a Jew' in English. 'It surprised them, because they didn't think Jews were soldiers.'
By April 1945, Mervyn was billeted in a former SS barracks in the picturesque town of Celle, Germany, located about 15 miles from the recently liberated Bergen-Belsen camp, as he awaited further orders.
'I wasn't allowed in because of diseases, so I didn't see the inside, but I saw the people who were fit enough to come out, in various stages of emaciation. I managed to talk to those who could speak English or a bit of French.'
For the next 14 days, Mervyn visited the camp and Hanover railway station where Jewish survivors were arriving from across liberated Europe. 'None of them ever discussed what had happened to them. They had one issue, and that was to get to what they called Palestine.' Mervyn shared their sentiment, after his own experience growing up and what he'd seen in Germany.
Being a non-smoker, Mervyn traded his cigarette ration for chocolate and handed it out to those he met. 'Their faces! The fellow I was talking to was so excited. Years later, I was told there's no worse thing you could give someone who's starving.'
After two weeks, Mervyn received orders from Col Gore to return to England, dashing his hopes of getting to Berlin for the end of the war.
Mervyn boarded a train bound for Bruges but the war wasn't yet over and there were still dangers. 'All the train windows were boarded up and the lights were dimmed because German youngsters had been given guns and told to fire at any Allies they saw.'
Mervyn slept for 36 hours straight and when he woke and disembarked in Belgium, he realised the war was over. 'They were dancing in the streets, music playing. We asked what it was all about. They told us that Germany had surrendered the day before, all while we were asleep on the train. I missed it!'
With VE Day around the corner, Mervyn sees modern-day parallels with 1940s Europe.
'I remember that picture of Neville Chamberlain. 'Peace in our time!' An absolute nonsense and we knew it was nonsense then. I'm sure he did too, and if he didn't, he was a bigger fool than I thought.
'When Russia invaded Crimea a few years ago, we did nothing. We said: 'Naughty, naughty' which didn't have much of an effect on Putin and, as a result, he invaded Donetsk. Now he's building up his strength. When he's ready to go, there's the rest of Ukraine, then he'll go for Poland and the Baltic States, and get back the former Soviet Union. That's his objective.'
Mervyn recently spoke to Keir Starmer, the Prime Minister, during a Downing Street function. 'I said to him: 'We need to show that we're ready to protect and go full-out with Ukraine. If it's a victim, you've got to help. A bully will never attack anyone he thinks is stronger. As long as you go around pretending that we're strong and showing that we're weak you'll get aggression in the world.' He didn't say a word. No matter: I had a chat with his wife and told her to influence him.'
'You don't stop to think, 'Ah, this is going to be a historical day.' You get on with it'
Mairie Scott, age 98
Mairie grew up in Clapham in south London and experienced London at war as a young teenager. 'I lived through the Blitz because my parents didn't want to split my sister and me up. We tried going down Clapham North Tube once and afterwards I said to my parents, 'I'm not going down there again!' It was horrible.'
From then on, the family took cover under the stairs whenever there was an air raid.
As soon as she could, Mairie applied to the Women's Royal Naval Service (WRENS) in March 1944. 'When they heard I was a General Post Office-trained (GPO) switchboard operator, they welcomed me, although officially I wasn't of age to be conscripted. However, accept me they did, and sent me immediately down to Portsmouth, to a place called Fort Southwick.'
Fort Southwick, carved deep into the cliffs overlooking Portsmouth Harbour, housed a bombproof underground bunker known as UGHQ. To reach the tunnels, recruits had to descend over 300 steps, with the elevator reserved for officers.
'It was a secret underground headquarters. We used to sleep down there in three-tiered bunks. We would eat down there. It was a proper little village community and was great fun. We had great camaraderie.'
During her time off, Mairie and her colleagues would go to Southampton. 'That's where the US Army was. We'd never met Americans before, and they were lavishing all the girls with chocolate and cigarettes, whatever you wanted. They were very generous, great fun and good to know. It was all the American dances; you'd be doing all manner of things that the rather sedate English would never think about doing. But it didn't matter what your feet were doing, as long as you moved!'
The main Allied commanders in charge of the planning for D-Day worked in Southwick House, a mile to the north of the fort. 'It was there that the high command planned it all; General Dwight Eisenhower, Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery, Air Officer Commanding-in-Chief Arthur Tedder and Admiral Sir Bertram Ramsay. They were sending everything down to our switchboard to be sent all over the place.'
About a month before D-Day, Mairie was made familiar with some new equipment called a very-high-frequency (VHF) set. 'It was a simple machine with levers and a one-way system; only one person could speak at one time. So I would lift my lever and transmit the message – all in code, of course, so you had no idea what was going on.'
In the early days of June 1944 it became evident that the long-awaited liberation of Europe was imminent. 'You couldn't see the water in Portsmouth Harbour for ships. It was crammed full of ships of every description and size, and I then knew that the big day was about to commence.'
On the morning of D-Day, Mairie was working on the new VHF set relaying coded messages to the commanders fighting on the Normandy beaches. 'While I was on the VHF, when the recipient of my messages lifted his lever, I was really quite shocked because what I heard was the war. The first message I passed went smoothly, but when he lifted his lever to respond, the first thing I heard was intense machine gun fire, incessant cannon bombs, men shouting, men shouting orders; the general chaos of war.'
'It was graphic. It's something I shan't ever forget. You really did feel part of it so D-Day for me – it will always be a very poignant memory because it was the day we started to liberate Europe.'
For decades, like so many veterans, Mairie didn't talk about her wartime experience. 'As a young woman or a young man wouldn't stop to think, 'Ah, this is going to be a historical day.' You get on with it. But it was a very historical day, because once they got their foothold in Normandy, well, you know the history. So from that aspect, now I can feel a little pride.'
Mairie remembers VE Day vividly. 'On VE Day, I went to London with a friend called Betty. You were kissed by hundreds of men who had a good opportunity. Some were not bad, others repelled, but you smiled, and that was it. The atmosphere I can only describe as joyous, people were kissing and hugging and cheering and just making noise.
'But I didn't go to the Palace, because I don't like those enormous crowds. I think we went and found ourselves a small café somewhere and had a meal. It was a lovely day, yes. You had a sense of a job well done.'
Mairie was demobbed in 1946 and went on to work for a firm of consulting civil engineers near Victoria before marrying and having her daughter, Carolyn. For VE Day, Mairie and Carolyn have been invited to Westminster Abbey for a service that will be attended by the King and Queen.
'They called me Cat John – they said I had nine lives!'
John Morris, age 103
John Morris joined the Territorial Army (now known as the Army Reserve) at 16 and was called up a year later in 1939, working on anti-aircraft (AA) guns during the Battle of Britain 'Our job was to just break the bombers up. Obviously, we were being shot at quite a lot. These Stuka bombers came down trying to blow us out of the sky'.
John was transferred to the Essex Regiment, again in anti-aircraft, and was with them when the Regiment went overseas as part of Operation Torch, the invasion of French North Africa by the Allies. The operation hoped to force the Axis powers out of North Africa and create a springboard to launch offensives into southern Europe.
On Nov 8 1942, John was approaching Algiers in a large amphibious assault. 'I was still on the aircraft guns then, but we lost our guns on the journey: a ship carrying our guns was torpedoed and we lost a few men.'
Without their AA guns, John's unit was moved along the coast towards the city of Bône, now known as Annaba, in Algeria. Due to being left-handed, John had been given a Bren gun as the bolt action Lee-Enfield rifles were difficult to use.
'They put me on top of this flat top building with a colleague of mine with twin Brens firing as bombers came across. Our job was to try to shoot them down, which was a bit ridiculous really.'
After joining the Eighth Army, the British field army formed in Egypt in September 1941, John contracted malaria and after his convalescence, fate intervened. 'I was at a transit camp waiting to come back to my unit. They came and asked for volunteers for the Raiding Support Regiment (RSR).' John had no idea what this fledgling unit was. 'I volunteered. It's a dodgy thing to do but I was young and stupid.'
He moved with the new unit to Palestine for six weeks of tough training. 'At five o'clock in the morning, we did a long walk to the beach about five miles away, did a swim, came back, had breakfast, then we went jumping off the back of a lorry to do training for the parachute jumps.'
His first jump was terrifying, being shoved out through the bomb doors of a Vickers Wellington bomber.
John took part in the invasion of mainland Italy at Salerno, where they encountered little resistance, before moving with RSR to Bari on the east coast. Bari became home to the new Land Forces Adriatic and a key base for special operations supporting Partisans on the small islands along the coasts of Yugoslavia, Greece and Albania.
John was then sent on a six-week Morse code refresher course, caught hepatitis and ended up in a hospital on the slopes of Mount Vesuvius, which promptly erupted on March 17 1944. 'They evacuated from there; that was a narrow escape as well. That's why they call me 'Cat John'. They said I had nine lives!'
The RSR's first special operations raid was in Yugoslavia. 'We landed with landing craft, and we were there to support the Partisans more than the special forces. We landed in Dubrovnik, then we moved up to Montenegro. My job was to train these Partisans on how to use a new radio set and Morse code.'
The RSR accompanied the Partisans on operations. At the time, German forces were withdrawing from the Balkans northwards and the mission was to make their retreat as costly as possible.
'We were there [in Montenegro] for a few weeks, and we came back to Italy and a little while later, we went to Albania and did the same thing.
One night, John was on overwatch with a sergeant. 'We saw this fighting patrol come. We couldn't fight five Germans or Italians so they took us prisoner and put us in a guard house in Sarande.
'While we were being questioned, we knew that the Balkan Air Force was going to drop pamphlets on the camp the next morning telling them to surrender as they were going to be surrounded. But the sergeant I was with said: 'When they question you, tell them they're going to drop bombs, not pamphlets.' So when the air raid alarm sounded the next morning, everybody scarpered undercover. All they left was the one guard outside our guard house.'
John's sergeant had somehow secreted a handgun and in the chaos of the air raid, they made their move. 'The sergeant called the guard over, stuck him up, made him open the cell door, and we tied him up, gagged him and managed to escape.'
After an arduous six-mile hike through the hills, they made their way back to friendly lines.
John found himself guarding German POWs in Italy when news of the German surrender broke in May 1945. He then returned to England to train for potential operations in the Far East, where the war was still ongoing. 'Thank God, the war ended before then, so we didn't have to go.'
After the war, John moved to Bristol and later emigrated to Australia. Though he fell on hard times, he now resides at the Royal Hospital Chelsea, where he receives full support as a Chelsea Pensioner.
'My fiancé got shot down in a Lancaster bomber – I knew he didn't have a hope in hell'
Queenie 'Robbie' Hall, age 102
'Like a lot of young people, I was very keen to get into service to fight Hitler, because we felt he had no right to invade Poland. My brother, Bob, who was nearly three years older than me, had volunteered to join the RAF as soon as the war broke out. That inspired me to go into the Air Force.'
Robbie, just 17 at the time, lied about her age to join the Air Force and was posted to the secretive 'Southdown' station in High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire, on Dec 27 1940. After six months of general duties, she took exams to qualify as a clerk.
'My exam results were so good that I skipped one promotion and went straight to the next. So there's Aircraftwoman (ACW) 2, second class, ACW first class, then Leading Aircraftwoman. And that's how I went from ACW 2 to Leading Aircraftwoman.
'So I went to work at the office in command accounts. I was the youngest and the dogsbody to start off with.'
Robbie's boss was Sir Arthur ' Bomber' Harris, Marshal of the Royal Air Force.'I thought he was a very nice man. I mean, he had a reputation later [Harris was accused of war crimes following the firebombing of Dresden in 1945] but that didn't match up with the man I knew.'
Being based nearby, Robbie could explore wartime London on her days off. 'I used to walk about all over the place. I got used to the Tube, I learnt to read the underground maps and as far as I can remember, anybody in uniform travelled free.'
The war had taken its toll on London's West End, stocks were low and there was strict rationing. 'The shops were so dull, all dusty and dirty. In the gent's outfitters on the corner of Piccadilly, there was just one suit in the window.
'I used to just wander on my own and go into a café somewhere and have beans on toast, which was all I could afford.'
When Robbie and the other girls received their pay, they'd go out for the night to a local bar. 'I used to have a cocktail, called a White Lady, that was supposed to have white wine in it. There used to be a young Welsh soldier there who was very good on the piano and he would play all the wartime songs. We'd sing We're Going to Hang out the Washing on the Siegfried Line and all that sort of jazz.'
Robbie had been with her boyfriend, Frank Vincent, since the age of 15. Desperate to be closer to him, she transferred to RAF Martlesham Heath in Suffolk, a fighter base for Spitfires and Hurricanes.
Robbie moved into digs in Felixstowe, where Frank's parents lived, alongside her friend Darcy from Martlesham Heath. They commuted by bicycle each day, covering nearly 20 miles round trip.
Frank would return home on leave every six weeks, but the stress of countless bombing raids began to take its toll.
'It was a nice summer's night, so he said we should go out for a walk. We were walking along, not far from the house, when he put his hand up and said, 'See that thumb? That's killed women and children.'
'I pulled his arm down and said, 'Well, don't talk about it, love. You're home on leave now, let's make the most of it.'
'If I'd had a bit more sense, I might have let him talk. I think he probably would have liked to have got something off his chest. His job did upset him. When you're young, you've got to fight, you've got to win the war. You don't stop to think of the actual consequences.'
Operational flying over wartime Europe was incredibly dangerous, with only half of RAF bomber crews surviving the 30 missions they were required to fly. Frank was shot down in his Lancaster bomber over Germany in August 1944, on his 23rd mission. Darcy was the one who delivered the devastating news from HQ that Frank was missing in action.
'He was killed on the night of August 25 1944. His parents were first to be notified and I was second. I knew enough about the Air Force to know that if you've been shot down in a Lancaster, you didn't really have a hope in hell.'
Frank, her first love, was a loss that Robbie has never forgotten.
'I didn't want to think about it at that time, but I have thought about it quite a lot since; what happened when the plane burst into flames? Did he burn alive in the plane? Did the shock of the thing kill him? Did he manage to parachute ? And if so, did the Germans shoot him? They used to shoot people coming down by parachute; or was he alive when they hitout the ground? What did they find of him? There were eight crew but all they found were his dog tags.'
By the time Frank had been killed, Robbie was living with his parents in Felixstowe where she remained until the end of the war.
'We calculated that Frank would have finished his tour of duty by September 1944, and we were going to get married in October or November time. So when people say to me, 'Did you go dancing in the street the day the war ended?' Well, no, no I didn't. Because I'd lost someone special, someone to whom I was engaged.'
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Around the city from the many aerodromes multicoloured flares lit up the countryside for miles. 15 August 1945 Wailing 'Forgive us, O Emperor, our efforts are not enough,' a weeping crowd of Japanese bowed to the ground before the Imperial Palace in Tokyo yesterday after being told that an Imperial decision had been reached. A report of the scene broadcast by the Japanese news agency to its offices in the Far East was picked up in New York and quoted by Reuter. Without explaining what the Imperial decision was, the agency broke off its transmission in the middle of a sentence and asked editors to hold the report. The Emperor's message was addressed to the people gathered before the Niju-Bashi – the double bridge leading to the parade ground in front of the Palace, the nearest point to the Palace which the public is allowed to approach and where the people are accustomed to gather in times of crisis and celebration. 16 August 1945 Americans continued today to celebrate the victory over Japan with undiminished vigour. The rejoicing, which began last night at seven o'clock when President Truman announced the Japanese acceptance of the Allied terms, continued all night and is still going on. President Truman declared today and tomorrow to be holidays for all employees of the federal government. Business houses throughout the nation closed today and probably many of them will do the same tomorrow. New York's Times Square, the traditional scene of great celebrations, was packed all night last night by a great crowd. They cheered, sang, and waved flags, and pretty girls were kissed by complete strangers and took it good-naturedly. Throughout the city motorcars roared through the streets with horns sounding and the occupants shouting, while tons of torn paper floated down from skyscraper windows in spite of preliminary pleas by officials that paper is still scarce and should not be wasted. The demonstrations were much larger than when Germany capitulated. In Washington huge crowds gathered before the White House. Mr Truman and his wife appeared in the portico and greeted the throng. 16 August 1945 While General MacArthur is issuing orders to the Japanese to fly to Manila to sign the surrender and is preparing to take command of the forces that will shortly land in Japan, Tokyo journalists and broadcasters are declaring that Japan only lost the war because of the Allied superiority in material and civil and scientific power. Japanese spokesmen all blame the Allies for their methods, and one paper says the 'entire nation is burning with righteous indignation over the enemy's outrages.' The Emperor denied that in starting the war the Japanese had any aggressive ideas. The Japanese envoys should, on General MacArthur's orders, leave for Manila this morning to sign the surrender and receive instruction. It is thought that the signing ceremony may not take place till next week. Men of the United States Third Fleet cheered the end of the war yesterday and then had to man their guns to shoot down about 16 Japanese planes which were approaching the American ships after the acceptance of the surrender terms. The British fleet shot down five. Admiral Halsey ordered that this should be done in a 'friendly way.'See also Editorial: problems of peace 17 August 1945 The floodlit spectacle of London is naturally much grander time than on the VE nights. From this building you see great illuminated flags waving and bright tops of towers that are lost in the darkness, and everywhere you look – north, south, east, and west – resplendent buildings rise like visions of the night. St Paul's, that we thought so often we were seeing for the last time, rises over the city, transfigured, something 'not made by hands.' By some technique of floodlighting the peristyle and dome are like precious crystals and the cross high over the lantern gleams like pure gold. How one remembers St Paul's glowing against the darkness with another glow, red and fiery, when Ludgate Hill was on fire and Paternoster Row was flaming. In the west the Abbey towers shine out and the Westminster clock tower was like a great ornament. Above it was the great bright flag on Victoria Tower.
