VE DAY – 80 YEARS ON

Eighty years ago, the guns fell silent in Europe.

For many, Victory in Europe Day – 8 May 1945 – was a moment of joy, relief, and remembrance.

To mark #VEDay80, we have curated a selection of stories and objects from the Their Finest Hour archive that reveal how ordinary people across the world experienced the end of the war.

"What a relief it was to learn that the war in Europe was over in May 1945! We celebrated with a bonfire on the nearby common and with a communal tea party for the children. Suddenly everyone was smiling and lights blazed out at night. After the years of gloom and tension, it was marvellous to be so carefree..."

Ann Bright, sharing memories of her family's evacuation from Jersey and life in wartime Surrey

"On May 7th, 1945, my mother and I were in Oxford Street on our way to the Middlesex Hospital. The street was deep in paper floating down from the windows and people were really excited saying, 'the Germans have given in and it's over'."

Jacqueline Bond, who picked up this rosette in Oxford Street that day

READ JACQUELINE'S STORY

"Yeading Avenue was decked in red, white and blue bunting and trestle tables were set out more or less the whole length of the road. Everyone came out for this party, which was a massive celebration of survival, victory and above all, optimism for the future."

Michael Pearce’s mother, Margaret, is holding his baby sister Susie (right)

READ MICHAEL'S STORY

Photo of WRENS marching in Portsmouth on VE Day.

Among them is Myfanwy Avril James, who had worked on chart correction for the D-Day invasion and was later transferred to the Fleet Air Arm.

READ MYFANWY'S STORY

Photo of VE Day celebrations in Portsmouth. Peter Charters, who lived in the city during the war, recalled the bombings, time spent in an Anderson shelter, and the joyful return to normality as peace was declared.

SEE THE CELEBRATION

Photo of Field Marshal Montgomery with Allied officers at Luneburg Heath following Germany’s surrender. The photo belonged to Bernard Victor Coldwell, a radio operator with 165 W/T Section, whose truck received the surrender message.

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Victory the bear, given to Roland Farndon on VE Day. Roland's father, Arthur, served as a sergeant in the Home Guard in Bulkington, Warwickshire, where the family ran a farm and village bakery throughout the war.

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"We celebrated Victory in Europe (VE) Day somewhere in the Mediterranean and ceremoniously threw our solar topees (Indian sun hats) into the sea. As we approached home, we had to anchor off the coast of North Wales because of a dockers’ strike in Liverpool. We were stuck there for about 3 days."

Stanley Dakin, a despatch rider and later sergeant in the Royal Army Ordnance Corps, who escaped from Dunkirk and spent four years overseas in Iraq and India

SEE ERIC'S ARTEFACTS

Souvenir programme for VE Day celebrations, Rear Headquarters, 2nd British Army, Lüneburg, 8-13 May 1945. Activities included football, bonfires, church services, and cinema shows with free beer. This copy belonged to Eric Winston, a driver with the Royal Army Medical Corps who had served since 1939.

SEE NORMAN'S ARTEFACTS

British soldiers in Germany on VE Day, 8 May 1945, posing with captured Nazi flags. Norman Shaw, pictured here, served with the British forces. Shared by his daughter, Marilyn Orpin.

READ GEOFFREY'S STORY

Street party in Hackney celebrating VE Day. Geoff Julier, who grew up there during the Blitz, recalled cheering as enemy planes were shot down, a German pilot landing on Hackney Marshes, and his mother fending off a drunken G.I. with a police truncheon.

"This really is it!! I can hardly believe it, no-one here seems able to realise it yet, though we have all decorated our houses with flags + everywhere simply shouts Victory."

Young Roy is wild with excitement + thinks the 2 flaps on his house are wonderful. He keeps saying "Is the War over Daddy?" but I don't think he realises what it means.

Oh dear isn't it marvellous dear, the years we've waited for this, and sometimes thought this day would never come. I think people generally have mixed feelings today, there has been so much sadness attached to this victory."

Letter written on VE Day to Max Surman, who served with the Royal Observer Corps in Malta. Part of a family collection documenting both home front and overseas service.

READ THE FULL LETTER →

"Eventually the news that we had all yearned for came with the announcement that the war in Europe was over. One cannot put into words the joy and elation that was felt by all at the knowledge that all the hard work and the pain and suffering by so many had ended. There was, of course, celebration everywhere."

Emrys Westacott, builder from Tredegar, South Wales, who served as an RAF airframe mechanic

Souvenir programme from RAF Takoradi in the Gold Coast (now Ghana), where Raymond Leonard Frewing served as an airframe and engine fitter during the Second World War. VE Day celebrations included football, films, dances, boat trips, and an Olde English Fayre.

READ THE PROGRAMME

Photo of children watching a Punch and Judy show during the victory celebrations in Dore, South Yorkshire. The contributor recalled being taken to Abbeydale Picture House, Sheffield, to watch George Formby in 'He Snoops to Conquer', followed by tea in the ballroom.

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Diary entry from Bernard Bradley Stowe, a Royal Marines fitness instructor serving in the Far East. On VE Day 1945, while en route to India, he marked the occasion with beer and corned beef.

READ ABOUT BERNARD

Invitation to Buckingham Palace for the VE Day 1945 investiture of Edward Woodhead of HMS Gulzar. He was awarded the DSM for rescuing troops under fire at Calais and during the Dunkirk evacuation.

LEARN ABOUT EDWARD

Photograph from a South Wales street party. Avril, born in 1936, came from a mining family with multiple relatives in the Forces and Women's Volunteer Service. She watched the festivities from bed, having caught German Measles.

READ AVRIL'S STORY

Group photograph taken at Filton on VE Day. Among those pictured is John Alfred Bridgeman D.F.M., RAF Flight Sergeant, who had returned from service in South Africa and Rhodesia to mark the end of war.

READ JOHN'S STORY

Photograph of Georgina Ellis, who trained as a metalworker in London, and her husband, Robert.

Robert was killed in Italy just six days before VE Day.

"OFFICIAL V.E. DAY Thank God
Half day off."

Diary entry written by Alan Edmund Drury, known as 'Ted', who served in the REME with the Eighth Army in North Africa and Italy.

"Every house seemed to be festooned with flags which included at least one Union Jack. At that point my mother entered the bedroom so I asked her why so many people were out on the street looking so happy.

"Why darling," my mother told me, "it's because it's your birthday." I of course believed her. Well it WAS my birthday: the date that day was 8 May 1945."

Christopher Champness, a young child who lived in Lee-on-Solent.

READ CHRISTOPHER'S STORY

"I knew there was something special going on, and that Hitler was a very bad man. My friend and I stood at the garden gate and some young men from the village had an effigy of Hitler and said they were going to hang him from a lamppost.

We thought it really was Hitler and seeing him strung up on a lamppost made us very, very frightened."

Margaret Metcalf-Pike, who lived in a small village in South Wales.

READ MARGARET'S STORY

"It was chaos in Nijmegen when the Germans surrendered, people marched in the streets in the evening, and the best part of the night.

People woke in the morning and still couldn't believe it, but it gradually dawned on everyone and things started getting back to normal - well as normal as one could be in those unusual times."

George Wagner, who served in the Royal Engineers from Dunkirk to Düsseldorf, meeting his future wife Annie - a WAAF - before D-Day.

READ GEORGE'S STORY

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Read powerful first-hand accounts, explore photographs, and discover personal artefacts - all part of a collection of 25,000+ stories and objects revealing everyday life during the Second World War.

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VE DAY – 80 YEARS ON

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