30-03-2025
VE Day is ‘last big chance to thank Second World War heroes'
Amongst the polite mingling, finger sandwiches and Union flag-themed slices of cake was the serious feeling that this would be one of the last gatherings of Second World War veterans to ever take place.
Six decorated attendees, aged 96 to 100 years old, convened at London's glamorous Ritz hotel on Friday, marking almost 80 years since the famous VE Day outing of Princesses Elizabeth and Margaret in the same hotel.
The tea party, organised by the Royal British Legion (RBL), was the official launch of the charity's commemorations to mark the 80th anniversary of Victory in Europe Day.
It brought together Bletchley Park Enigma machine operator Ruth Bourne, 98, First Aid Nursing Yeomanry (FANY) transmitter hut attendant Joyce Wilding, 100, Private Joe Mines, 100, codebreaker Bernard Morgan, 100, RAF soldier Gilbert Clarke, 99, and former child evacuee Doreen Mills, 96.
The high tea was billed as 'one of the last opportunities to come together and say thank you' to those who served the country from 1939 to 1945, ahead of the RBL's formal VE Day celebrations on May 8.
'This is one of the last major opportunities for the whole nation to pay tribute, to say thank you, to those that served, and to pay tribute to their courage and fortitude,' Mark Atkinson, director general of the RBL, told The Telegraph ahead of the poignant anniversary.
'There's not so many of us that are with it [any more] in a way,' Ms Wilding, who enlisted as a FANY aged 18 in Surrey, said over bites of The Ritz's Victoria sponge cake.
The centenarian, whose role as a transmitter hut attendant involved tuning powerful radios to receive messages from agents in occupied Europe, added that they formed a 'wonderful camaraderie' at the time.
'I must say it was a wonderful time of my life, [even] with all the tragedies and the terrible things that went on, but VE Day was just joyous, it was unbelievable,' she said. 'We danced the hokey cokey all the way down Piccadilly and ended up in front of the Palace.'
Ms Wilding was one of two veterans at the high tea event – and among an estimated 100,000 people in 1945 – who decided to celebrate the historic moment outside Buckingham Palace.
'There was an electric feeling going through the crowd,' said Ms Bourne, who was a Bombe machine operator and checker at Bletchley Park during the war. She was awarded the Legion d'honneur in recognition of her service in 2018.
Ms Bourne, who was only 17 when she joined the Women's Royal Naval Service (WRNS) in 1944, added: 'In the end, we all broke out. We started shouting: 'We want the King, we want the King!'
'And believe it or not, they came out, the King and the Queen, Princess Elizabeth in her khaki uniform and Princess Margaret. Of course, we went wild.
'People were climbing up lamp posts, there wasn't an empty lamp post to be seen. We had a scarf, hat, whatever we had, we waved. I think that was the most exciting moment of my WRNS career, seeing the Royal family.'
Similarly to Ms Wilding, she spent the evening dancing down Piccadilly Circus, while a few miles down the road the two princesses were famously given permission by their father, King George VI, to go incognito among the revellers and to celebrate at the Ritz.
'The story is they did a dance through the Ritz Hotel,' Ms Wilding said of the now infamous tale, which has been immortalised in the 2015 film A Royal Night Out and in Netflix's popular dramatised series about the Royal family, The Crown.
Ms Bourne said 'no one knew it at the time,' and that the crowds outside the Palace were too busy 'doing the conga'.
She said: 'That's the old fashioned dance we were doing, complete strangers, holding on to one another. It was like we were all one great big family.'
As part of their national programme of celebrations to mark VE Day, the RBL is launching a range of downloadable resources available to all schools across the UK to help teachers plan related activities in classrooms.
At Friday's tea, three schoolchildren were invited to meet the veterans to ask them about their experience of the war and were able to observe Mr Morgan's original telex, which he received two days before VE Day to tell him the Germans are surrendering, and which he has since refused to give to any museums.
Mr Atkinson explained: 'You want to make sure that children are learning and talking about the Second World War… it's very important.
'It was great to have children here today to meet directly with people who were there 80 years ago, to hear their stories. That's a core part of what the legion has a responsibility for, it's making sure that the service and sacrifice is never forgotten.'
After speaking with the children, Ms Wilding remarked: 'I think it's lovely to know that they know about it, because so often I find that the younger ones are not really very knowledgeable, because they've never lived through an air raid or anything like it.'
'One didn't realise how near, you know, with Hitler, we were,' she added. 'We could have been in trouble really.'
