VE/VJ Day 60 th Anniversary.

You’ll have seen this on the news, heard it on the radio, the celebration yesterday of the 60 th anniversary of VE and VJ days.

A service at Westminster Abbey, the bells fired (rung together rather than in sequence) for the first time since VJ day itself, a show in Horse Guards, the parade down the mall, the flyover :

The million poppy petals falling from the Lancaster. The parade itself. More excellent photos at the MOD site.

Not too surprsingly both my grandfathers were involved in WWII. One, an Air Force officer, worked on the development programme for the Spitfire and Seafire. Crashed his Hurricane before the war and reverted to ground based engineering for the rest of his career. The other was a doctor in Birmingham and was awarded the Albert Medal (roughly equivalent to and before the George Medal) for his actions during the bombings. Reading the citation is scary even now, 65 years later. In one incident, a collapsed building, burning still, with a woman trapped in the basement. He had his legs tied together, lowered head first down the firemen’s tunnel and amputated her trapped leg before pulling her out the same hole, the firemen hauling  on the rope.  Another, a bombed building, two walls and part of a the first floor left standing, upon which a woman in childbirth.  Up pops a ladder, up he goes, the baby delivered and handed down along with the mother. As the ambulance drives away and the various crews disperse, the final two walls fall down.

My wife’s father also fought, sunk twice as a seaman.

They were both gone before I was old enough to really know them (and I didn’t know father in law for long either). But there aren’t any family stories handed down about what they did. There’s plenty about rationing, about the creation of the NHS afterwards, about what it was like in the 1930s on the North West Frontier, but nothing about the actual war itself. I think this is why:

Ronald Perry, 81, was one of the veterans who brought their medals and memories. He was in the Parachute Regiment and remembers 1am on June 6, 1944, over Normandy. "We were shot at on the way down," he said. "After a couple of weeks, only 15 of our original platoon of 40 were still alive.

"I was 20 and had been brought up in that climate. I was doing something that mattered. So many didn't come back.

"I keep the emotions for my quiet moments."

And yes, in the celebrations yesterday, after they had the Last Post for those who died, those who did not grow old as we do, those we remember at the going down of the sun and in the morning, they sang that hymn, the one that is the unoffical alternative national anthem.

ND did those feet in ancient time                      

Walk upon England's mountains green?                      

And was the holy Lamb of God                      

On England's pleasant pastures seen?                      

 

And did the Countenance Divine                      

Shine forth upon our clouded hills?                      

And was Jerusalem builded here                      

Among these dark Satanic Mills?                      

 

Bring me my bow of burning gold!                      

Bring me my arrows of desire!                      

Bring me my spear! O clouds, unfold!                      

Bring me my chariot of fire!                      

 

I will not cease from mental fight,                      

Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand,                      

Till we have built Jerusalem                      

In England's green and pleasant land.

As we know, as we can see from the photos of yesterday, the generation that fought for this is passing. Please, we may have our paltry disagreements in this generation about exactly what constitutes the Jerusalem we strive for, let us not forget what people have fought and died for, devoted the best years of their lives to, not just this green and pleasant land, but the fact that we can make it better, that we truly can build Jerusalem.