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The Independent
08-05-2025
- General
- The Independent
Has national pride and celebration made us forget what war is really about?
Philip Jarman is a 101-year-old Second World War veteran, but he has little truck with the 'celebratory' clamour that accompanies our numerous wartime anniversaries: the bunting, the obligatory fly past, the royal gloss. Eighty years ago, he was still fighting a brutal war in Burma, and his reticence goes beyond mere end dates. 'We've got war all wrong,' he insists, disconsolately chasing crumbs around his plate. 'After 1945, we didn't have these repeated celebrations. We got on with building back Britain. In the years following VE Day, we were in no mood to celebrate.' The outpouring of joy on that one May day in 1945 – according to Ruth Bourne, a 98-year-old Bletchley Park veteran, 'a feeling that was almost electric' – speaks to the grinding toil of war directly preceding it, a painstaking slog through privation and pain. In the words of one former female soldier, 'wartime Britain was dull and difficult, spiked with occasional horrible bits of news'. The country had earned its celebration on 8 May, but the euphoria was not protracted. News archive confirms that the 1950s, Sixties and Seventies slid by with minimal pomp and ceremonial recall – Britain was too busy facing down problems in a post-imperial world to get excited about a war which ended with two new superpowers calling the shots. Even the fallen had to make do with scaled-down memorialisation. Jarman explains: 'We'd been badly bombed. And we knew war monuments did not work.' After the First World War, Britain had witnessed an unprecedented public art campaign; in a country scorched by the loss of nearly one million young men, memorials, cenotaphs, and monuments sprang up in market squares and city centres nationwide, but they had not stopped a second war. 'Let's have no more stone crosses or war memorials in the 1918 sense of the word,' insisted one disconsolate soldier. In a country desperate to crack on with the peace after five-and-a-half long years of fighting, the Second World War's 380,000 military casualties were bunched up on pre-existing war memorials. Only outstanding services like the Commandos enjoyed their own iteration in stone. The real sea change in Second World War commemoration came in the 1980s under Margaret Thatcher, when a full-scale war in the Falkland Islands and an upscaling of the conflict in Northern Ireland ushered in a new era of jingoism and dewy-eyed pride. Britain needed to remind itself, and the world, of our unequivocal fight for freedom in the 1940s, positing good versus evil in the context of British military encounters. Four decades after the end of the conflict, the nation doubled down on an outstanding victory narrative as, one by one, our great wartime leaders – Churchill, Alanbrooke, Montgomery – died, making way for an elderly rank and file to have their moment in the sun. By the 1980s, crucial distance had been established; where once the Second World War's death toll had been dwarfed by the First, now in the modern era, few could believe the scale of the devastation and havoc wreaked by a conflict that quickly became a cornerstone of our national identity. Lest we forget, our entire nation bent its neck to an all-consuming war effort in the name of King and Country. The record-breaking Overlord Embroidery was given its own museum and the gallant efforts of men who risked life and limb on D-Day and beyond were re-remembered. In 1984, the IRA detonated a bomb in Brighton's Grand Hotel during the Conservative Party Conference. Thatcher emerged from the rubble to channel her inner Churchill and face down her attackers. 'The government will not weaken. This nation will meet that challenge. Democracy will prevail.' The martial prime minister had already learnt the value of binary language and military prowess. Since then, another 40 years have passed and remembering has gathered pace. Commemoration in stone and marble reveres the legions who fought from our former colonies, the millions of women who played their part, and even the animals and children caught up in the mindless wreckage. We live in a modern era when being seen is all-important and living a long life is taken for granted. Philip Robinson, 99, was balloted (compelled) to serve underground, mining coal as a 'bevin boy'. The absence of a uniform, and later a memorial, burned deep; when finally four Kilkenny stones in the National Memorial Arboretum arrived to honour the bevin boys' war in 2013, he was delighted. But others, like Philip Jarman, are still equivocal about the role of commemoration. He is one of the few remaining survivors from the Second World War; today returning to memories of a war that killed his brother, his sister-in-law and his best friend, is challenging. And he insists we get the tone all wrong. Reluctantly, Jarman tells me the story of Richard Combes, his childhood friend who joined the navy in 1939: 'I was looking forward to him coming home on leave. But his father said, 'I'm afraid you'll not be seeing Richard this weekend'. I joked, 'Has he been confined to barracks?' Mr Coombes' retort was quietly devastating. 'He was on HMS Hood.' 'That shook me so much that, although his parents lived nearby, I couldn't bear to go and see them for six months. He was their only child.' The quiet parlour, the ticking clock, the terrible pain, the accountant and his wife without their precious boy. Jarman never went back. 'Oh dear,' he says, 'you've made me dredge it all up.' The Bismarck 's sinking of HMS Hood, the largest battleship of its kind, in May 1941 was felt nationwide. The aft magazine exploded and the ship sank within minutes. From a 1,418-strong crew, there were three survivors. Silently, I wonder how Mr and Ms Combes marked VE Day. Jarman concedes it might be touching after all this time to find his friend's name on a monument; Combes R. A. L. etched in perpetuity, so I plan a trip to the famous Portsmouth Naval Memorial. Apparently, Richard was listed there when they adjusted the monument to make space for thousands more deaths at sea in a devastating Second World War. I arrived in late May 2024, a week before the 80th anniversary commemorations of D-Day. The whole area had been cordoned off for the King's arrival, so I couldn't access the naval memorial. 'How ridiculous,' said Jarman. It felt ridiculous. A buoyant sounding brass band practised on the shoreline; anticipation in Portsmouth was mounting. A high green metal wall blocked my way to the giant obelisk, and two security guards refused me access. They offered to take a picture of Richard's name instead. One shrugged apologetically. 'It's all a bit celebratory, isn't it? Like we've forgotten what war is about.' I nodded, and felt strangely gutted. An engraved name isn't much, but it is better than nothing. The Commonwealth Graves Commission insist that the memorial is 'accessible at all times'. I can confirm this is not true. Eighty years after the D-Day landings, it felt like commemoration had been sidestepped for celebration on an epic scale. I watched the ceremony on TV a week later and wondered if perhaps Jarman had a point. Has confected national pride and triumphalism engulfed our recall of what war is really all about? Likewise, 80 years after VE Day, it is worth being mindful of what 'victory' meant. Yes, 8 May 1945 saw an extraordinary outpouring of joy: young surviving servicemen and women celebrating a free and peaceful life that now unfolded in front of them, but what of the impact of war not caught on the cameras, beyond the bombed-out houses, hidden in empty bedrooms, and silent sitting rooms? An aching hole that no amount of ticker tape or jitterbugging could bring back. The real cost of war.
Sky News
04-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Sky News
What VE Day was really like
Ruth Bourne, 98, remembers the "electric buzz" among the crowds partying outside Buckingham Palace on VE Day. She was one of hundreds of thousands of people that swarmed into central London on 8 May 1945 to celebrate in the streets after such a long and gruelling war. "There was the most amazing atmosphere," she tells Sky News as we take a black cab to the palace to retrace some of the route she took on foot 80 years ago. "All of a sudden the future was here," she recalls with a beaming smile. "Everyone was so happy! "I was there with a million others, or so it felt. It was a wonderful experience. There was the most amazing atmosphere - it was like an electric buzz in the crowd. "We all thought, well, the king is bound to be around, you know, we'll go and see if he's there." People began chanting "We want the king" outside the gates of the palace and then the royal family came out on to the balcony to celebrate with the crowds. "It was like a great big family and you all surged forward together... it was the best place to be," Ruth says. Ruth was a teenager during World War Two and had served as a Turing Bombe operator - a machine invented by Alan Turing that helped speed up the process of codebreaking and intercepting secret Nazi messages. She remembers feeling exhilarated by the sense of relief and freedom on VE Day. "We all went crazy cheering," she says. "There wasn't an empty lamp post to be seen, they were all clambering up the lamp posts like swarming bees." She remembers meeting countless people that day, sharing stories and dancing with anyone. "You went into the street and with complete strangers, you stood one behind the other and clasped each other around the waist and did the conga. You sang 'Aye aye conga!'" She remembers ending the night in a park next to a fire somebody had lit, laughing and singing with groups of people who had become instant friends. After so many years of blackouts, the light of the fire was symbolic. "The lights were up," Ruth remembers. "The bonfires were lit in the open air…we were glad to see the back of the blackouts. "People might not realise now what it was like, it was like lockdown almost. "Everything was lit up, including a lot of the servicemen, I must say. They were very, very excited to be free of all this! "Nobody wanted to go to bed, nobody wanted to let it go… we felt free on that day, we were just young and having a wonderful time."
Daily Mirror
03-05-2025
- General
- Daily Mirror
VE DAY 80 YEARS ON ‘I helped defeat the Nazis - but I couldn't even tell my own mum'
Ruth Bourne's war work was so secretive not even her own parents knew about it - but while they saw her as a giggly teen, she was actually codebreaking at Bletchley Park. Now, 80 years on from VE Day, the Birmingham native has opened up about her historic actions. Clever Ruth Bourne's work was so secretive her mum never knew how she helped win World War II. As a teenager, Ruth was chosen to work at a top secret site, Bletchley Park, set up to decode Nazi messages. Despite admitting to being a 'giggly' teen, she took her role in the war very seriously and when her mum pressed: 'You can tell me, I'm your mother.' 'I thought; 'right if I tell my mother. It will be all over Birmingham in 20 minutes!' she told The Mirror. Winston Churchill called Ruth and her colleagues his 'special hens' who had 'laid so well without clucking'. Ruth, now 98, living in north London, kept silent about her important work until she was in her nineties and the demands of the Official Secrets Act were lifted. 'I'm proud we kept the secret. My parents died and never knew what I did. We did what we were told, you know!' she told The Mirror. 'I told them it was confidential secretarial work.' Ruth, whose dad was a doctor in Birmingham, only told her husband Stephen Bentall, in the 70s. 'I think they would have been pleased with me now. You know, now that it all came out and I've got the medals. ' In recognition of her service, Ruth was awarded the Legion d'honneur in November 2018. Ruth, whose dad was a doctor in Birmingham, had studied French, Spanish and German at school and turned down a place at London University to read languages to join up with the WRNS Women's Royal Naval Service (WRNS) aged 17. 'My initial application was refused. But the second time I was accepted. I was sent to Scotland to a training camp very near Loch Lomond, a little farm that had been turned over as a barracks for the training of Wrens. Everybody got a category where they were going to serve; motor transport, signalling, and they all had badges to sew on their uniform. But half a dozen of us had no badges and we thought 'what have we done wrong?'. ' The new recruits joining with Ruth in 1944, were told they had been picked for SDX, standing for 'Special Duties'. 'We thought we were going on the HMS Pembroke, we never saw the sea. We fetched up in Euston. Initially we saw a petty officer and she interviewed us and she said the work you are going to do here is highly secret and confidential so once you're in you won't be allowed out,' Ruth recalls. 'The hours are antisocial, there's no promotion, you get higher specialised pay when you are trained. If you don't like the idea you can leave now. We stayed and were then sworn in and we had to sign the Official Secrets Act. I'm told that you must never tell anybody anything you've done here, or anything you've seen or anything you've heard. ' Ruth served as a Bombe Operator at Eastcote and Stanmore and would years later return to act as a tour guide at Bletchley museum for 25 years. The Bombe machines she worked on were designed by Alan Turing to crack the Enigma code. 'A lot of us should come straight from school, girls of 17, 18 and 19 who were extremely naive. We were still silly and giggly. All we knew is we were breaking enemy codes. We didn't know the ramifications. 'We didn't know how incredibly difficult it was to break German codes. We didn't know there were 168 million, million, million possible ways.' Her work was 'repetitive but exciting' when the cry of 'job up' was heard, it meant the code had been cracked. At its peak, almost 9,000 people worked at Bletchley, three quarters of them women. Ruth remembers only a handful of Bombes when she arrived. Eventually there were more than 200. 'The only time you ever spoke about our work was when one girl might say to the other girl; 'What are you doing tonight? Sitting or standing?' We worked in pairs and it meant if she was standing you were operating the bombe. If you were sitting, you were in the checking room, operating the other machine. ' At the time she didn't appreciate how much the Bletchley codebreakers had helped with the planning of D-Day. "I didn't really comprehend the enormity of what was going on. Everything was spread out. So what you got as a bombe operator, was just a little bit of the jigsaw, we didn't get the whole picture. 'We knew where ten or twelve of the German divisions were. We did our best to make it very favourable for the D-Day invasion. We knew that the Germans believed that we were going to invade further north than we actually did. ' Ruth remembers clearly the end of the war as she celebrated with the millions outside Buckingham Palace: 'We were in Stanmore and I think it came over on the radio, 'the war's over.' We were incredibly elated and two or three of us ran out. Into the road. 'There wasn't very much traffic in those days because there was no petrol and we stopped a car, We linked arms and waved telling him 'the war's over. the war's over. Come and have a cup of tea'. We walked just up the pathway and we asked the regulating office, can we bring this civilian for tea? And we had tea. Everybody was just euphoric so all the rules were broken. 'We were kids and we happened to have a sleeping out pass and we went into London and the tube was buzzing with 'the war's over, the war's over'. Everybody was going to Buckingham Palace, so we got on the bus and we joined the crowds gathered there and somebody started up the shout, 'We want the King. We want the king'. 'And would you believe it,.eventually, the royal family came onto the balcony and they waved. Everybody waved whatever they had on to wave; gloves, scarves, hankies, coats. People climbed on the lamp posts, wherever there was a lamppost there was somebody on it. Everybody went wild. That bit I remember very well. 'There were perfect strangers talking to each other in little groups. People spoke to each other and linked hands. And then there was a Conga.' When the evening came Ruth went to Hyde Park joining a group of American soldiers who'd lit a little bonfire. 'I think they may well have used the benches or the litter boxes, whatever they could. We all sat on the grass around the fire and we sang songs, some old songs, some modern songs. Then we found our way back to our billets and I don't think anybody slept very much that night. We were all highly elated and incredibly relieved.' But after the celebrations Ruth's work continued and this time it was to dismantle the bombe machines wire by wire. 'Churchill didn't want certain people to know that we could still break into Enigma. I remember sitting out on a warm, sunny day with the soldering iron. There were five miles of wire in each bomb machine.' Ruth only found out how life-saving her work was in the 1990s. "It was only when I saw the Enigma machine at a lecture at the Royal Geographical Society that I realised the enormity of it all," she said. Ruth is now rightly proud of her female colleagues: 'I think there were approximately 1800 girls. And they kept the secret. How can you put that in your words? How important that was? "Nobody ever talks about the hens 'who were laying so well without clucking'. They are put to one side. I think the World ought to know that we were there and we were not clucking and we were only kids from school.' VE Day: 80th Anniversary Magazine Specials To commemorate the 80th anniversary of VE Day, we bring you two special special collector's magazines that look back at events that led to the end of World War II in Europe and marked a new era. In the VE Day 80: Anniversary Collector's Edition we share photographs from the street parties that were held all over Britain, while esteemed author and journalist Paul Routledge paints a picture of how the day was bittersweet, mixed with jubilation and hope for the future, as well as sadness and regret for the past. Routledge also recounts the key events of the Second World War, including Dunkirk, the Battle of Britain and Pearl Harbour. The magazine costs £9.99. Also available is World War Two - A History in 50 Photographs, a definitive pictorial account of the war. Carefully chosen from hundreds of thousands of images, this commemorative magazine shares 50 exceptional photographs - including many rarely seen shots - that capture the devastating moments, horror, hope and eventual triumph of World War Two. The magazine costs £6.99.
Yahoo
04-03-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Flypast and concert for VE Day 80th commemorations
There will be a four-day celebration of the 80th anniversary of VE Day, including a flypast, concert and a Westminster Abbey service, the government has announced. The commemorations, marking 80 years since the end of World War Two in Europe, will run from the Bank Holiday Monday on 5 May, until 8 May. Veterans will be joining the events, with only a shrinking number of that generation able to attend in what will be among the last major wartime commemorations involving those who served. "People across society will be able to hear our veterans' stories first hand, to reflect and remember," Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy said. And it would be an opportunity to "pay tribute to all those who served in the Second World War and to reflect on the values that they were fighting for". Ruth Bourne, 98, who worked at the wartime code-breaking base in Bletchley Park, Bucks, will be taking part in the commemorations. She remembers how the war had ended and VE Day celebrations were held on 8 May 1945, when the Nazi regime in Germany had been defeated. "There was an electric buzz among everyone and eventually the royals came out and waved, and we cheered like crazy waving whatever we had on us," Ruth says. "People climbed on every available lamppost, lit bonfires in Hyde Park and we sat around singing songs. "Not many went to bed that night." Defence Secretary John Healey said: "The freedoms we enjoy today were defended by our remarkable Second World War generation. "Our duty today is to safeguard the British values they sacrificed so much to uphold." Tara Knights, of the Royal British Legion, said: "We will be running educational and community engagement programmes to encourage everyone to get involved in this momentous occasion." Arts Council England will also be helping communities and local organisations hold commemorative events. It is not yet known which international guests might be attending, including whether US President Donald Trump will be part of the ceremonies. Last year, for the 80th anniversary of D-Day, the then US President, Joe Biden, joined commemorations in Normandy, alongside King Charles III, the UK's then prime minister Rishi Sunak, and leaders including President Emmanuel Macron of France, and President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine. The previous VE Day events, marking the 75th anniversary, were disrupted by the Covid pandemic. For VE Day 80, there will be four days of events: 5 May: A military procession from Whitehall, in central London, to Buckingham Palace will be followed by a flypast of current and historical military aircraft, including the Red Arrows; the Cenotaph, on Whitehall, will be draped in union jacks, remembering those who died during World War Two; there will be a party on wartime battleship HMS Belfast, on the Thames, and street parties around the country 6 May: An installation of ceramic poppies at the Tower of London will mark the anniversary, and historic landmarks across the UK will be lit up 7 May: A concert will be held in Westminster Hall, at the Palace of Westminster, in central London 8 May: A service will be held in Westminster Abbey and a concert, for 10,000 members of the public, at Horse Guards Parade, in central London Later in the year, on 15 August, a service led by the Royal British Legion will be held at the National Memorial Arboretum, Staffs, to commemorate VJ Day, or Victory in Japan Day, and the end of the war. Sign up here to get the latest royal stories and analysis straight to your inbox every week with our Royal Watch newsletter. Those outside the UK can sign up here.
BBC News
04-03-2025
- Politics
- BBC News
Flypast and concert in VE Day 80th commemorations
There will be a four-day celebration of the 80th anniversary of VE Day, including a flypast, concert and a Westminster Abbey service, the government has commemorations, marking 80 years since the end of World War Two in Europe, will run from the Bank Holiday Monday on 5 May, until 8 will be joining the events, with only a shrinking number of that generation able to attend in what will be among the last major wartime commemorations involving those who served."People across society will be able to hear our veterans' stories first hand, to reflect and remember," Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy said. And it would be an opportunity to "pay tribute to all those who served in the Second World War and to reflect on the values that they were fighting for".Ruth Bourne, 98, who worked at the wartime code-breaking base in Bletchley Park, Bucks, will be taking part in the remembers how the war had ended and VE Day celebrations were held on 8 May 1945, when the Nazi regime in Germany had been defeated."There was an electric buzz among everyone and eventually the royals came out and waved, and we cheered like crazy waving whatever we had on us," Ruth says."People climbed on every available lamppost, lit bonfires in Hyde Park and we sat around singing songs. "Not many went to bed that night." 'British values' Defence Secretary John Healey said: "The freedoms we enjoy today were defended by our remarkable Second World War generation. "Our duty today is to safeguard the British values they sacrificed so much to uphold."Tara Knights, of the Royal British Legion, said: "We will be running educational and community engagement programmes to encourage everyone to get involved in this momentous occasion."Arts Council England will also be helping communities and local organisations hold commemorative is not yet known which international guests might be attending, including whether US President Donald Trump will be part of the year, for the 80th anniversary of D-Day, the then US President, Joe Biden, joined commemorations in Normandy, alongside King Charles III, the UK's then prime minister Rishi Sunak, and leaders including President Emmanuel Macron of France, and President Volodymyr Zelensky of previous VE Day events, marking the 75th anniversary, were disrupted by the Covid VE Day 80, there will be four days of events:5 May: A military procession from Whitehall, in central London, to Buckingham Palace will be followed by a flypast of current and historical military aircraft, including the Red Arrows; the Cenotaph, on Whitehall, will be draped in union jacks, remembering those who died during World War Two; there will be a party on wartime battleship HMS Belfast, on the Thames, and street parties around the country6 May: An installation of ceramic poppies at the Tower of London will mark the anniversary, and historic landmarks across the UK will be lit up7 May: A concert will be held in Westminster Hall, at the Palace of Westminster, in central London8 May: A service will be held in Westminster Abbey and a concert, for 10,000 members of the public, at Horse Guards Parade, in central LondonLater in the year, on 15 August, a service led by the Royal British Legion will be held at the National Memorial Arboretum, Staffs, to commemorate VJ Day, or Victory in Japan Day, and the end of the war. Sign up here to get the latest royal stories and analysis straight to your inbox every week with our Royal Watch newsletter. Those outside the UK can sign up here.
