V-E Day

[Owen]

Some VE Day memories here from St.Dunstan's.With quite a few from those at the Front.
http://www.st-dunstans.org.uk/vevjda...r_memories.asp

[Owen]

Another one here.
http://www.wartimememories.co.uk/ve-day.html

Love this one from a POW.

Showers not working - Johnny and I went to Commandant to get showers going - heated water all had hot showers - many had lived dirty possibly for months because couldn't get it to work. Just lay on grass in group of 50. Radio loud - heard Churchill say "the war would finish at midnight". 2pm 8th May 1945. Close to toilets - still had Red Cross parcels - eg. tea. Took door off toilet for fire to heat water for tea. Prisoners stripped wood off - building gone between guard walking around. Buried wood under greatcoats. Guard couldn't believe it. Ossie Phillips, POW, Bischofhopfen

[Owen]

A 51st Highland Division soldier remembered this.

Dr Tom Renouf, holder of the Military Medal, was born in 1925 in Musselburgh and served in the 5th Battalion Black Watch of the 51st Highland Division. On VE Day he was at the Elbe river, where the German forces collapsed. When he came home he studied physics at Edinburgh University and had a long teaching career. He later became secretary of the 51st Highland Division Veterans' Association "When the surrender was announced we basically stayed put on the front line. The sergeant-major worked his way along, telling us all that the war was over. You didn't want to move - it might have meant getting hit by the last bullet, or stepping on the last mine, or getting hit by the last shell.

http://www.findarticles.com/p/articl...8/ai_n14624254

This story on same website.

Brigadier Frank Coutts CBE was born in 1918 in Glasgow. He served for 40 years, finishing as Colonel of the King's Own Scottish Borderers. He played rugby for Scotland in season 1946-47.
He has two daughters, several grandchildren, and lives in Edinburgh "VE Day! We just couldn't believe it. 'We' were 600 men of the 4th Battalion of the King's Own Scottish Borderers, lying exhausted about halfway between Bremen and Hamburg - exhausted after a gruelling 10-day battle for the port of Bremen, finishing with a front-row seat to a 1000bomber raid, followed by unopposed entry into the city to be shocked by the total devastation and human misery. By this stage of the war we took some shocking.
The reaction when the words 'Cease fire at 0800 hours tomorrow morning' came over the wireless was interesting . . . some idiots fired their rifles in the air, which is not only contrary to discipline, but not a very British way of doing things.
The officers were called in and the Padre said a short prayer of thanks. After little sleep, all euphoria had evaporated on a cold misty morning. We'd been at it for six years and the war wasn't over yet . . . soon we joined a huge convoy moving east, across the Elbe and right into east Germany to a village not far north of Berlin called Letzlingen where the girls flung themselves at the Jocks 'for fear' of meeting a Russian. We weren't at Letzlingen very long. We were well and truly in the Russian zone [of the new, carved up Germany] and were soon back in our trucks, trundling west for days over shell-pocked roads.
For us the European war was over. We had left home with 652 Borderers from the shires of Roxburgh, Berwick and Selkirk and in a comparatively short campaign of seven months had seen 413 killed or wounded. A terrible loss of fine young men.
There was much thinking to be done - mainly about war and peace. I was now responsible for 250 men. Why should they have had to give up six years of their lives to fight for King and country? What was to become of them? When would they get home; would their marriages have held firm? Would they get their jobs back
Would I get work?
That led us to think about the nature of war and the reasons for war. We were fortunate that there had been absolutely no doubt about justification.
In the 1930s we grew up in a semi-military state which was preparing for war.
Today's peaceniks would be horrified to know that we thoroughly enjoyed the spectacle of bits of Bremen being blown sky-high, the carpet bombing of Dresden left us absolutely cold, and the biggest cheer of all was reserved for the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima. And yet I reckoned myself a practising Christian - surely this was a terrible fall from grace?
During the war my father, who had been an Army padre in the first war and knew well the horrors of battle, wrote an article entitled Thou Shalt Not Kill: How Then Can A Soldier Be A Christian? His conclusion: if the soldier purges his own heart of hate and male violence, he may be a Christian. So I believe armies are valid, but must be controlled.
After 40 years as a soldier, I can only say: man is vile.
Brigadier Frank Coutts's story appears in the Church of Scotland's Life and Work magazine

There are lots of really interesting stories on that site.
One about a War Widow made me almost shed a tear.
For the families whose relatives didn't come home VE Day (and later VJ Day) must have really been a hard very sad time.

[sapper]

On VE day back in 1945, I was in the privilege ward 1 for severely wounded men at Shaftesbury Military Hospital.
Early that morning I was taken to the operating theatre where the genius that made the replacement hip operation (Major John Charnley, later Sir John) was going to give me a chance to live a normal life.
Permission to amputate my left leg had been obtained from my parents. I was nineteen and not an adult! In those days adulthood was 21.

I came round in the evening, with the foot end of my bed propped up at 45 degrees, and soaked with blood. Still with my own leg.
The Genius had removed the bone on top the hips, that you hand your trousers on, put it my legs to replace the completely smashed bone, and plated it altogether with a steel plate stamped with the war office arrow and with WD stamped on it.
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He was unable to get enough bone, so that leg is a bit shorter than the other. The operation is not that important these days, but in 1945 it was nothing short of miraculous.

[Kitty]

Sapper, i never knew it was that bad. I mean, what an amazing technique! One hell of a VE Day for you. Kitty

[sapper]

Later Sir John asked me “Are you an engineer?” “Yes Sir” “Then would you like to help me make my own surgical apparatus?” “Of course Sir”
So in my wheelchair I helped him make his orthopaedic apparatus. On completion he would put it on me and take a photograph, Sadly I lost them.
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Later Sit John sent us to that wonderful old Elizabethan Manor House that belonged to the Cunard shipping line family. Lake House, A place of peace where men returning from the horrors of war found a place that even today opens its arms and welcomes you home

[sapper]

I have feeling that at any moment, my old pals will walk through the door. For time stood still in the enchanted old Manor. It remains exactly the same as over 60 years ago. It is a place that still echo’s the yearning to at last get back on my feet. It is a place of great nostalgia, where the ghosts of times past… almost materialize into reality.
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It is an enchanted Manor House. It now belongs to the POP star Sting. His wife invited me back to take tea with them, delightful, absolutely delightful.
Many years later I tried to find Sir John to thank him for giving me a better life, when all others had failed. But sadly, he passed away in 1982. His Widow Lady Jill sent me a book on his life.
I went back to the old Manor and did a programme for BBC TV.
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Lake House on VE day in the Spring of 1945. The enchanted Manor.
Sapper

[51highland]

My father celebrated VE Day 1945 with a half bottle of beer, then along with his mates continued to check German troop concentrations around Fickmuhlen, Germany.
Then was told he might be going to the Far East, happily that did not happen. Instead he was a discipline officer at Westertimke POW camp, guarding and processing 2000 whermacht & 1000 SS Troops. Happy Days!!!

[lancesergeant]

Looks like a Hurricane to me!

[von Poop]

Thanks to Skipper on WW2f, & Peter on the 'on this day' thread for the reminder.
It's VE Day.