Wigan Album

V.E. Day. An extremely wonderful day that the whole nation enjoyed, and celebrated with GUSTO. I was eleven years of age at that time, and I still remember it quite vividly. So many extremely atrocious events had occurred in the previous six years. One such event, out of so many. YouTube. ‘ The great escape. The reckoning’.

I love hearing the stories recently on the telly about VE Day. I recall my dad telling me there were bonfires around Scholes, and dancing in the streets and a lot of drinking. What a relief for folk after the stress of six years..

Seeing the sailors reminded me that I hope people did not forget yesterday that the war was far from over for some people that day. My father (who lied about his age and joined the Royal Navy on 4 September 1939) spent nearly all the war in the Indian and Pacific Ocean where the war with Japan went on until 15 August. He didn't actually get back to the UK until early 1946. Good luck everyone and stay safe.

I found the V.J. Day more muted. May be it was because so many of the civilian population in Hiroshima, and Nagasaki perished, with the dropping of the atomic bomb, but there is no doubt, that that did save a countless amount of allied military lives.