V E Day

[teamsaint]

Opportunities for those who were actually involved to commemorate , many of whom endured great hardship and danger,are going to diminish very quickly,as those people reach extreme old age . This year is realistically the last five year anniversary that many who served will be alive . This is important, but doesn’t justify the endless jingoistic nonsense.

[Tony Halstead]

Absolutely agree.

[Braunschlag]

Absolutely agree.

Absolutely disagree!

[ardcarp]

On to VJ day. An episode of The Reunion was re-broadcast on R4 this morning.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b05rl3j8

Four Japanese POWs (plus a historian whose father was one such) talked of their experiences. Since the programme's first airing in 2015, the four have all died, the last one only in April this year aged 108.

VJ day has not been as widely commemorated as VE Day for various reasons, including the reticence of those involved to relate their awful experiences, and the fact that people in mainland Britain were not personally endangered.

[Serial_Apologist]

The numbers of Soviet dead are simply staggering.

Britain seems to have created a modern myth that we 'won the war' on our own - the period of 'standing alone' somehow extended mythically to the whole of the six years.

Another example of the ignorance cited by Richard.

To which Hollywood movie makers have frequently responded in ways that said that it was them wot won it.

[LMcD]

Russia celebrates tomorrow. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victory_Day_(9_May)

Liberation Day in the Channel Islands tomorrow.

[ahinton]

Absolutely disagree!

Why and on what particular grounds?

[Serial_Apologist]

Opportunities for those who were actually involved to commemorate , many of whom endured great hardship and danger,are going to diminish very quickly,as those people reach extreme old age . This year is realistically the last five year anniversary that many who served will be alive . This is important, but doesn’t justify the endless jingoistic nonsense.

To those of us "baby boomers" born within months of the ending of WW2, the irony was that our elders and betters seldom indicated wanting to talk in detail about their wartime experiences, whether in action or civvy street, beyond remarking to us how lucky we were not to have gone through it. Maybe others had different memories of that period; but I do often wonder in retrospect what many of that generation really felt about Alan Bennett's "Then the Americans and Russians asked to join in, and the whole thing turned into a free-for-all" (1961 - Beyond The Fringe); doubtless sensitivities and political correctnesses would declare such satire unworthy of today's respects.

[Keraulophone]

An episode of The Reunion was re-broadcast on R4 this morning... the reticence of those involved to relate their awful experiences

Indeed; one of the four survivors had refrained from speaking about his experiences until the age of 99. I was interested to hear their accounts as my father and mother served respectively in the Royal Indian Navy based in Bombay, and the British Army in Burma. They would reminisce about their schooldays in India, but not about the war. Several of my father’s relatives and friends died in Changi prison camp, and he would never allow anything made in Japan to enter the house.

[Nick Armstrong]

I... have fairly unmixed feelings about this celeb ration, 8 May. I believe it has been foisted upon us as some sort of celebration of B****t, and am relieved that Covid-19 has forced a scaling down of whatever plans were afoot.

Agreed, it’s some small mercy that lockdown has spared us a lot of [insert adjective] Union flag-waving

[DracoM]

[MrGongGong]

So today in my village
a local singer went round on the back of a trailer pulled by a tractor stopping off to sing at various spots
we played fiddle and squeezebox tunes outside the house and folks chatter to each other (at a safe distance)

and the sun shone so factor 85, UV shirt and parasol out

[johnb]

I was around for the original V E Day - having been born just as Dresden burned from the allied bombing - and have fairly unmixed feelings about this celebration tomorrow, 8 May. I believe it has been foisted upon us as some sort of celebration of B****t, and am relieved that Covid-19 has forced a scaling down of whatever plans were afoot. I wish it weren't happening.

My lifetime has been blessed with (mostly) peace in Europe - not forgetting the Balkan tragedy - and I attribute much of that to the existence of the European Union: with all its faults, it has been partially instrumental in keeping that peace.

I detest nationalism in all countries, and don't like it when the one I live in wheels out dusty jingoistic tropes like this one.

I agree.

I was probably conceived on (or around) VE day and during today I kept thinking of my father. He served in WWI, having lied about his age, and eventually received a gun shot wound to the head on Gallipoli. He was treated on a hospital ship and miraculously survived. Throughout his life there were two obvious indentations or hollows on his upper forehead - one where the bullet went in and the other where the surgeons removed it. He never talked about his experiences, at least not with me. He died when I was 20 and, as strange as this seems, I never really got to know him properly or to learn about his life before he married my mother towards the end of WWII.

[BBMmk2]

My late father, was out in the Far East, India and Burmah. He was in the RAMC, attached to the Chindits, but thankfully was not with at the time of that fateful event.

[LezLee]

My dad was a corporal in the RAF from 1942, mostly in India. He was in charge of stores and apparently spent many happy hours picking weevils out of biscuits. The rest of the time he played tennis.
I was 2 when he went and when he came back he didn’t have a door-key and knocked on the door. My mum sent me to answer it, I came back to her saying “Mummy, it’s a man”. I can’t imagine the awfulness.