Where was your parent on VE-Day?

[j.sabourn]

#28 David I sometimes miss posts and Ivan’s post about Lou caused me too look back to see to what post he was referring to and have just read your post , and is so similar to my own fathers wartime doings if that is the word. It was 1946 before he got home from Burma , about 8 stone in weight yellow as a lemon. Covered in boils
and to crown it all suffering with toothache and still in his jungle fatigues including slouch hat .His first road to recovery was to have every tooth in his head extracted he was about 30 at the time. Some say the good old days others tell the truth.Cheers JS.

[David E Hewson]

Hi J, Sounds like a similar history. I remember dad's hat also . My brother Roy (2years older ) and l used to wear it until it got too worn and we burned it standing to attention 7 and nine years old !!
The fever from malaria took a long time to dissipate.
Being young we barely understood the war even though we were bombed and had brick air raid shelters (unused !!)in the street, a barrage balloon at the end of the road and a powdered milk tin full of shrapnel.
Regards ,
Dave

[j.sabourn]

He brought home with him a leather plaited with bamboo handle long whip .which when I asked what it was used for , he said for the japanese to whip their prisoners , I found out later it was a Burmese stock whip for the cattle , but the original story was always kept for visitors who asked the same question. My sister who,was 5 years younger than me took a long time to recognise him as our Dad. JS

[j.sabourn]

PS #29 /30 What ever year it was it must have been Robbie Burns Night as wife was in the lounge of hotel,watching a live show and I was in the bar with Lou and one of his sons.JS

[Richard Wilmot]

Talking about victory over an enemy. What get's up my nose most these days, is how most media call it "victory over the Nazis" and not "victory over Germany". My Grandkids were told in school, that WW2 was against the Nazis. Even in the news, most report about "the war with the Nazis" these days. It's probably a woke thing, created when the EU was invented.

My father thought the same as you. He would say, 'the only good German is a dead one'. However, not all Germans were Nazis. Check out people like Crista Wolf, Ernst Thalmann and many other anti-Fascists during those years. Unfortunately, today Fascism is raising its ugly head again esp. in England with Nigel Farage and his Reform UK party. This is nothing to do with 'woke' it is a worldwide movement of right-wing politicians and their easily led followers.

[Ken Atkinson]

#21 Hmmm!! but where were your parents on VE Day

Ivan - Please look at#1 as I started the thread - Ken

[Ivan Cloherty]

Ivan - Please look at#1 as I started the thread - Ken

Ken, I unreservedley apologise for my crass stupidity; as my mother would have said "it is better to keep your mouth closed and be thought a fool, than to open it and remove all possible doubt"

[Gary Fuller]

On VE day, my dad was a coxswain on a Higgins Boat (LCVP) in the Philippines after spending the earlier part of his wartime career in the South and North Atlantic, and the Caribbean in a destroyer then a couple of minesweepers, then an ocean-going tug towing a floating drydock to some place in the Pacific. coxswain.jpg

[Steven Mills]

My dad was still a Japanese POW somewhere in Thailand..

[Rob Cumbes]

My Dad was in Palestine on VJ Day. He had fought across North Africa, took part in the amphibious landings on Italy, fought the length of Italy and then transferred to the Palestine Police. The weather in Italy during that campaign was some of the worst in living memory so a move back to hotter climes were an attraction. Bit of "the pan into the fire". He spent the next three years chasing Zionist and Arab terrorists and avoiding being ambushed and bombed until the Bruitish government pulled the plug and let them get on with it. By the time he got home, most had already been demobbed, so jobs and housing were in short supply. He, Mum and my two sisters lived with my grandparents - no electricity, no gas etc. until he could get a job with accomodation as caretaker/gardener at Hay Castle. He was still having nightmares about the hand to hand fighting at Monte Cassino until he died in his eighties. He never complained and never talked about it.