How the West Midlands remembered VE Day - poignant interviews from the files of Peter Rhodes
Eighty years ago this week, Field-Marshal Wilhelm Keitel signed Germany's unconditional surrender, marking the end of the Second World War in Europe. For the battle-hardened servicemen who had spent years fighting, it came with a huge sigh of relief. For the children who had grown up during a period of rationing and wartime austerity, it was one huge party. In 1995, to mark the 50th anniversary of VE Day,, the Express & Star's Peter Rhodes spoke to people across the West Midlands about their memories. This is what they said:
If VE Day seemed a long time a-coming, so did little Marjorie May Corns.
She was two weeks overdue when her mother, Mrs Emily Corns, went into labour on VE Day. Marjorie arrived at the family home in High Street, Wombourne, just as the church bells opposite were ringing out for victory.
During the war years church bells had been silenced, to be sounded only as a warning of invasion.
"It was a wonderful day," recalled Mrs Corns, living in Wombourne close to her daughter, now Mrs Marjorie Sutton.
"At three o'clock Mr Churchill began his speech announcing the end of the war. I started in labour and she was born just as the victory bells rang our. We hadn't heard our bells."
So why wasn't a child born on this special day given a more appropriate name?
"Yes, she might have been called Victoria," says her mother, "but I had promised to name her after Marjorie, her godmother.
"But we gave her the middle name of May to remember the month."
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VE Day for Joe Gough came deep inside Germany, at Luneberg Heath. The British were on one side of the river, their Russian allies on the other. In the early hours of May 7, 1945, the teleprinter suddenly clattered and Joe, a Royal Corps of Signals message handler, stared in wonder as the most important print-out of the war arrived. It was from General Eisenhower at the Allies' supreme headquarters, for distribution to all army units.
The words that millions of servicemen had waited six years to hear had arrived: "Effective immediately. Offensive operations Allied Expeditionary Force will cease."
"Being a signaller, I saw the signal before anyone else," recalls Joe at his home in Wolverhampton.
"We had an idea that something was coming but we didn't know when."
The relief was intense. His unit had been fighting towards Berlin ever since D-Day-plus-3, 11 months earlier.
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When peace came in May 1945, British soldiers found themselves in every corner of the world. But none had a stranger job than Lieutenant Ken Jackson, of Kidderminster, late of the 71st King's African Rifles, who was in Somalia. After service in Burma, his battalion returned to British Somaliland to be disbanded, leaving the young officer facing the boring prospect of barrack life in Nairobi.
"So instead I volunteered to serve with the Somalia Gendarmerie, an Army-controlled glorified band of units keeping order and holding at bay the local brigands."
VE-Day found him with his fellow officer Gerry Stagg, of Great Barr, who later became his best man, on a remote hill in the Ogaden, hundreds of miles from the nearest city.
"Our radio was broken, so there was little contact with the outside world. During this time,peace came to Europe. When we heard, via a message from HQ, all I thought was that now, maybe,they would supply our troops in Burma properly for a change."
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For Ron Wood and his comrades on tank transporters, VE Day came early. The Royal Army Service Corps unit had followed the fighting from D-Day across France and into Germany and witnessed the last major offensive by Hitler's once-dreaded Luftwaffe.
"A heavy formation of jets attacked the area," he recalls at his Wolverhampton home.
