I'm glad to see there will be two minutes silence at 11.00am today, plus some other commemorations to mark VE Day, which will be more muted than we might have liked due to the lockdown. I hope there will be something similar to mark VJ Day and the end of the War. We will remember them.

Quote from: Steve J on 08 May 2020, 05:40:12 AM
I'm glad to see there will be two minutes silence at 11.00am today, plus some other commemorations to mark VE Day, which will be more muted than we might have liked due to the lockdown. I hope there will be something similar to mark VJ Day and the end of the War. We will remember them.

+1

+2

Cheers - Phil

+3

And me !

Same here!

Don't forget it's also the Nation's Toast at 3pm https://www.veday75.org/get-involved/nations-toast/

I'll be celebaring in the garden with 1940's music played on a 1930's gramophone. 

Faugh A Ballagh ! 

Some of the ASDA staff were dressed up as Land Army, which was pretty cool, despite them getting very little notice. Cheered everyone up whilst the in the now normal queue to get in.

 We joined in with the National Toast this afternoon https://grahamsgaming.blogspot.com/2020/05/ve-day-national-toast.html

My dad phoned me in great excitement last night. He's 94. He had discovered a letter sent by him from London, VE Day 1945, to his girlfriend in Edinburgh. The War was to continue for him as he was off in a matter of days to hostilities in the East to work in Intelligence, intercepting Japanese messages and sending them back to Bletchley Park. However with a 48-hour pass granted to celebrate VE Day, he did so by climbing the railings of Buckingham Palace and cheering the King and Queen as they appeared on the balcony at least three times. He was also involved in Howard Marshall's outside broadcast from London, and then went to a party with a Captain from the famous Phantom regiment, the special reconnaissance unit that actor David Niven was so proud to be a member of.

Nearer home, my dad's girlfriend's reply was that VE Day celebrations in Edinburgh were somewhat muted until the evening due to recent activity by German U-Boats in the Firth of Forth. It's easy to believe that a small corner of the world such as the one I live in now was far away and remote from the hostilities of the war in Europe. However, U-Boats were still destroying shipping in the Firth of Forth up to the last moments of the war and also, quite remarkably, houses on the next street were damaged in the first Luftwaffe air raid on Great Britain during a rooftop dog fight. The German pilots that were shot down and killed during that daring daylight raid were buried in the local cemetery. They were the first enemy casualties of the war to be buried on British soil.

I remember my boys' excitement when they learned that the flats on the other side of the street, the gardens behind, the flats their best friends lived in, a chunk of roadway and a further set of flats had been hit by a stick of bombs jettisoned by a German bomber that was being pursued by one of the Spitfires based on the banks of the Forth to protect both the Rosyth dockyard/ naval base and the shipping on the River Forth.

That evening, after the evening meal, the three of us had to stroll round to the point in Marchmont Crescent where you could see the repaired stonework on the facing of one of the buildings.

It is a tad disturbing that quite a lot of people believe "this" celebration is one that marks the end of WW2.
No. Not quite.

Geoff

Ps - my dad was a signaller on a corvette on D-day. He never really saw action other than that. At the top end of our village (last time I looked, 30+ years ago) you could still see the dip in the ground that was his slit trench when he was in the Home Guard.
In late 1944 his brother won the Military Medal as his unit was one of those trying to get through to Arnhem.
Whenever I watch A Bridge Too Far I always wonder "where's Uncle George..."? You'd have thought the reality would have sunk in by now.

Yes, Geoff, even today "The Forgotten Army" lives up to it's nickname

I remember attending the International Model Fair at RAF Haltob, quite a few years ago, and one veteran from Fleet AIR Arm had bult a Sunderland Flying boat from scratch in brass. it was superb.

Talking to him he said he flew several missions a week from his call up to the end of the war hunting U boats. He said they "never saw a single U-boat" to depth charge. they most exciting sortie was when they got strafed by a German fighter at the limit of his range, so he did one pass firing at them then flew off.

Quote from: Ithoriel on 08 May 2020, 07:42:22 PM
Yes, Geoff, even today "The Forgotten Army" lives up to it's nickname

Yes even in by many wargames manufacturers who produce  WW2.