One young woman's VE Day

Mum was just 19 when VE Day came in 1945. Here she is with her beloved dog Randy, posing in the fields near Nirvana I suspect, She looks almost a child still, with her white ankle socks and hesitant expression. I wonder if war had ended when this was taken. With her warm cardigan this could be early spring, with the war still alive or autumn and a time of peace.

She kept her journal all through the war, as she mentions here. I thought you might enjoy reading her words, and hearing about her feelings on this momentous day; a young woman of quiet life in a suburb of London. Here is what she wrote

8 May 1945

Tuesday

Today is V.E. day. Victory in Europe has come. Today and tomorrow are being held as a national holiday. I am sitting out in the garden at the top of the lawn in my grey skirt and greeny blue blouse, with little Randy lying at my feet, and the time is 4.10.at 3 o’clock we went into the drawing-room to listen to Mr Churchill announcing it over the wireless. Then there was a short service and then they took us all around England, firstly in London, Edinburgh, then Belfast, then to the docks at the Mersey, then to Coventry and Cardiff and Bath to hear eyewitness accounts of the celebrations that were taking place. The wireless is really wonderful in bringing you into touch with all the places. And indeed what a wonderful day this is. We know that it isn’t the end of the war. There is still Japan to be conquered, and when you think of all the misery that has been and is being suffered by our men over there you feel that this is a time of thanksgiving more than rejoicing, for no longer are we subject to air attacks, sirens, doodlebugs, rockets and the misery destruction and suffering that go hand-in-hand with them. German war has always been so much more real to us somehow though, that it is hard to feel that we’re not altogether at peace. I don’t think the crowds will be any more when final victory does come from the description over the wireless. There were masses of people outside Buckingham Palace, and at Whitehall where Mr Churchill in his car on his way to the House of Commons, after making his announcement to us, and [sic] stood up in his car (it was open) and waved his hat to the crowds. The commentators said that police on horseback tried to make their way in front of the crowds but could hardly do it, and at one point it looked as though the people would bodily lift the car, Churchill and all. There are flags hanging out all over Cheam too and loudspeakers going round. I know I have not made many comments in my journal about the war. No doubt I should have done, but somehow when you merely live from day to day and you are only 13 when it starts, and every night week in week out, and year in year out the news bulletins are put on, and you hear of advances here or there and such and such a place captured (which owing to bad geography conveys very little to you) you don’t really take a terribly vital interest in it. You endure the bombs and rockets, and after the first two or three days they become part of life. No doubt if I had been older when it started I would have been more awake to what was going on. The whole of my precious journal has been written during war, and when I look back to the first few entries I see how young 13 and 14 are. Anyway a great deal has happened in one way or another, and now the war with Germany is over. It still seems unbelievable. One day not think what a German victory would have meant. This is indeed a day of deliverance, a day of thanksgiving and rejoicing.