“Tonight I will go to sleep knowing that everyone I love will be safe” ......... May 8, 1945, Victory in Europe Day and “the end of the German War”

Homecoming, Bellville, autumn 1945

“Tonight I will go to sleep knowing that everyone I love will be safe.”

Even now that one line entry in a diary has a profound effect on me.

It was written in the late evening of May 8th 1945, at the end of the first day of peace in Europe.*

For some it had been a riotous night of fun, dancing and abandonment, for others a time of quiet reflection on the cost of six years of a hard war.

I don’t know what my parents and grandparents did on that night.  Nana I expect spent some of it thinking of her son who was buried in a cemetery in Thailand and must also have wondered what her native Germany would be like.

She had been born in Cologne a city which like so many was now a desert of rubble, wrecked streets and shattered lives.

Granddad no doubt was in a pub while mum and dad would have been celebrating in their different ways.

It is of course an event fast fading from living memory and will soon join the experiences of those who lived through the Great War as a piece of history only now visited through the films, books, memorials and personal accounts of that earlier conflict.

Celebration, Hallstead Avenue, Chorlton, May 1945

And so here are just a few images of the days following the end of the conflict in Europe.

During the spring of 1945 it was clear that the war was drawing to a close.

In March the Western Allies had crossed the Rhine in to Germany and in April the Red Army was in Berlin.

The death of Hitler on April 30th moved things on and on May 7th in the early hours of the morning the German army in the west surrendered.

Despite no immediate official announcement the news spread that the war was over and later in the day the Government confirmed that Germany had surrendered and that May 8th would be a national holiday and designated it Victory in Europe Day.

The Manchester Guardian reported that here in the city,

“At ten o'clock Albert Square had become a great dancing floor, upon which partnerships were formed on a free and easy plan. Music came from the town hall and reached the crowd through loudspeakers. 

Homecoming, Belleville, 1945

A popular prank was to climb on to the roofs of the air-raid shelters to dance - probably it was the men of the navy who began it. 

But whoever set the example found abundant followers, and presently the girls of the WAAF and the ATS showed a readiness to participate. Without ceremony dozens of them were hauled to the top amid a good deal of cheering. 

Fireworks were occasionally thrown into the air, and there was an unexpected supply of paper hats, streamers, confetti and other carnival accessories which, after years of a paper famine, would have been thought to be unobtainable.” *

And across the country and beyond celebrations were planned and carried out.

I am not sure that our own celebrations happened on that night.

Reunion, Belleville, 1945

These were spontaneous events and what was clearly a formal sit down affair needed planning.

I have every confidence that someone will have recorded the evening in their diary and we will learn the date and perhaps something of the mood in the school hall.

The Government had already said that

“Bonfires will be allowed, but the government trusts that only material with no salvage value will be used.” 

And that “until the end of May you may buy cotton bunting without coupons, as long as it is red, white or blue, and does not cost more than one shilling and three pence a square yard.” 

Strangely for such a momentous event the expressions on the faces of the group seem sombre.

A party, School Hall, Chorlton Green, May 1945

There are a few who are smiling and some who look slightly baffled but the rest just stare back at the camera.

Perhaps the time lag between the victory news and the celebration party was enough for the euphoria to wear off, or maybe uppermost in many people’s minds was the sacrifice in treasure, lives and lost time.

I remember an old friend from Ashton-Under-Lyne  saying to me that her abiding memory of the war was how it "had robbed her of a good six years of  my life.

Instead "of just growing up and having the sort of fun a teenager should have there was always anxiety. 

You were worried about your own safety and that of your family and the knowledge that any boy you grew fond of might be killed.”

And that is perhaps the moment to close.

Pictures; Chorlton in 1945 from the Lloyd collection and homecoming of the Prince Edward Hasting Regiment, Belleville Ontario, autumn 1945 from the collection of Mike Dufresne.

*Manchester Gurdian May 9 1945