05-05-2025
104-year-old VE Day hero invited to Buckingham Palace tea
He kept the horrors of the Second World War to himself for eight decades.
Now, 104-year-old veteran Henry Ducker has shared his tale for the first time ahead of having tea with the King and Queen at Buckingham Palace for VE Day.
The former RAF flight mechanic, who served as a Leading Aircraftman for six years until 1946, said he was 'honoured' to accept the invitation.
Mr Ducker, who was called up to the RAF aged just 19, has never previously met a member of the Royal family and will be the oldest of 30 veterans attending the 80th anniversary celebrations.
The day's events, organised by the Royal British Legion, of which the King is patron, will begin with a military procession and fly-past with the Royal family and the Prime Minister.
As Sir Keir Starmer paid tribute to the Armed Forces, calling their sacrifice 'a debt that can never fully be repaid', Mr Ducker shared his memories with The Telegraph.
During the war, he trained at Cranwell in Lincolnshire and the No 1 Radio School in Egypt, and was posted to Reykjavík, Heliopolis, Malta, and Italy, where he worked on the Hawker Hurricane aircraft that saw action in Monte Cassino.
He ran control centres wherever he went – including one rigged up in a stripped-out caravan at the end of a runway in Oakington, Cambridgeshire.
'I saw some terrible things in Oakington,' he said. 'With boys going out in the bombers and coming back all shot up. It was horrible. I shall never forget that.'
'They were all very talented people and their lives got cut short, it's such a shame,' he added.
In 1943, he sailed for the Middle East aboard the Orbita and vividly recalls how his convoy came under repeated enemy air attack in the Mediterranean.
He said: 'We'd been about 20 hours or so sailing and the sirens went, and I looked out and I could see all these aircraft coming towards us. The orders were to get down to the hold, but I was a bit curious to see what was going on. I hung back a bit, and I saw the first lot come and drop, but then I went down.
'In this hold, they'd fastened all the bulkheads and the officers were there with their guns drawn.
'Nobody panics at all, but you should've seen these men's faces. It was like we were in a tin can, the bombs were dropping, you could hear them.'
In Yugoslavia, impoverished villagers once invited him to a girl's birthday meal in their family home. 'They had no beds, they just slept on the floor…They brought flagons of great wine out. They kept filling our glasses up!'
He was on guard at night in Campo Marina, Italy, when news of the German surrender came through. He remembers having been given a gun for his guard duties and firing it up into the sky, celebrating.
'I'd never fired a gun before that! I was over the moon. I knew I was going home, I'd survived,' he said.
He later helped escort German POWs by train across Europe. Taking a train through France on his way home, then crossing the Channel to Newhaven.
'I shall never forget the ferry, the Royal Daffodil that went into Newhaven. And there I sent a telegram to my mum and dad saying 'I'm now back in the UK, I'll see you soon'.
'I hadn't seen them for years. I went in as a boy at 19, and I came back at 26 almost to the day. I came home in January 1946 and got married in March. I wrote to her the whole time I was away, we'd met when we were 5.'
Veterans from the Royal Navy, British Army, RAF, Wrens, Special Operations Executives, D-Day and Desert Rats, as well as 20 Second World War-era civilians, including evacuees, have all been invited as guests of honour to the tea party at the palace.
Ten female veterans will be in attendance, including former codebreakers, drivers and mechanics.
Among them are Joyce Wilding, 100, of 'Churchill's Secret Army', and Ruth Bourne, 98, a Wren at Bletchley Park. Both were in the crowds outside Buckingham Palace in 1945, celebrating VE Day.
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