VE Day - By George, how they earned the right to party

THE war was over. Victory was proclaimed. Bells, free from muffles, rang from every church steeple. Tables, chairs and pianos were tossed out into the street for impromptu parties; town centres filled up with joyous youth making "whoopee" - to use an Americanism which had come over here during the war.

And, as night drew in, everyone gasped as public buildings which had been blacked out in darkness for fiveand-a-half years were suddenly floodlit once again.

Plus, the English being the English, the weather forecast returned. The media had been forbidden from predicting rain or shine for fear the enemy would gain some tactical or strategic benefit if such information fell into his hands.

But on May 8, 1945, people quickly learned that it would be warm with rain around lunchtime, clearing up in time for the mother of all parties in the evening. And that was one of the great things about VE Day: everything came together to create the right conditions for a celebration.

For instance, the timing was right.

Everyone knew the Tuesday would be the day - "Today is V-Day" shouted The Northern Echo's front page headline.

"In Hartlepool, the noisiest period of the day was at the very beginning when, at midnight, ships in the harbour rent the air with the victory sign on their sirens, combined with bursts from machine guns, which sent tracer bullets in a red stream into the sky, " reported the Echo the following day.

But as the end of the war had been so long in coming, the rest of the NorthEast dared not believe it had really arrived without official confirmation. So no one really knew whether they should go to work and put their backs into the war effort or whether they should stay at home to celebrate the end of the war.

"At 11am, Stockton High Street was a mass of people walking aimlessly about or draped over the pavement barriers waiting for something to turn up, " said the Darlington and Stockton Times (D&ST).

"The impression one had was that the suddenness of the announcement - it had been expected the previous day - came almost as an anti-climax and that with all that the people had endured, and in hundreds of cases suffered, there was little disposition to throw aside all restraint."

Then came the lunchtime rain.

"Redcar, Saltburn and Marske were gaily decorated but continuous rain drove jubilant people indoors, " said the Echo.

IT cleared up just as Churchill broadcast during the afternoon. This fired the starting gun for the rest of the day's celebrations.

"Shortly after Churchill's speech, a ship off Sunderland fired 20mm Orkilon shells in celebration towards the Fulwell district, " said the Echo. "Mrs R Lord of Osborne Street was listening to the wireless when a shell went through the roof and became embedded in the ceiling of the kitchen, but fortunately did not explode. It was removed by a neighbour."

Elsewhere, the noise was not quite as explosive, but certainly cacophonous.

"At Middleham in Wensleydale on Williams Hill, " reported the D&ST, "from the old Roman fort, the bells of five churches were heard simultaneously, viz Middleham, East Witton, Wensley, Leyburn and Spennithorne."

Streets spilled out into their spontaneous parties. In Catterick, the RAF organised dances and cinema shows for adults and treated 200 children to tea. In Winston, there were children's sports in farmer's field; in Great Aycliffe there was a baby show and ankle competition on the green.

"In Seaham Harbour, ships in port were gay with bunting and flags flew from the pulley wheels at Seaham, Dawdon and Vane Tempest collieries, " reported the Echo, the miners' bible.

In many towns, people spilled into the centres searching for some civic announcement.

"In Middlesbrough, the mayor (Councillor R Ridley Kitching) made a brief address from the town hall balcony.

"He appealed to the people to take their share in the building of a better Middlesbrough, a better England, and a better world. The townspeople stood in reverence for one minute to those who had made the supreme sacrifice."

Stockton - again - was similarly restrained. "The mayor (Coun A Ross) had a son in the Far East," reported the D&ST. "He asked everybody to go back to work after the holidays and to work as hard as ever to assist the war against Japan.

"We had, he said, got over the first hurdle and we must work religiously until we had surmounted the second."

Indeed, how must poor Mrs M Sains, of 5 Oxford Street, Eldon Lane, have felt on this day of days?

For it was on VE Day that George W Sains, 18, of Signal Company, US Third Army, had been killed.

In Whitby, a soldier drowned while celebrating his escape from hostilities, and back at Winston, an Army lorry overturned, hospitalising three soldiers and killing Sgt-Maj Newall-Smith, a female member of the ATS.

The Echo reported that York "was strangely quiet, in striking contrast to the hilarity of Monday night, when Canadian and French airmen joined with English servicemen and women and their friends in making considerable 'whoopee'."

Durham City was also "quiet". "The undergraduates, with a preponderance of women, marched into the Market Square in the forenoon and danced round the policeman seated in the traffic control kiosk."

As the evening wore on, though, the beer took its effect and the bonfires burned. A farmer used his tractor to carry a load of material up Roseberry Topping, while in Richmond, the High Moor beacon was set alight.

"Effigies of Hitler, hanging by the neck with his paintpot and brush, were a feature of Fishburn V-day celebrations, " said the Echo of the village's three bonfires.

"Another topical tableau was that of a model coalmine decorated with coloured lights with the slogan 'Fishburn has done its bit' in recognition of the local colliery having an output which is always on the target."

Hitler, poor fellow, had a rough night, being burnt in many different places.

Barnard Castle's celebrations "culminated at about midnight when a stagecoach in which Hitler lolled by the window was trundled into the market place and set on fire. There was a terrific blaze, and the figure inside went off with a bang. It was a satisfactory finale."

Darlington seems to have seen the region's most boisterous celebrations, with thousands of people thronging High Row and swarming the Market Square.

They climbed poles, ripped down flags, sang popular songs with the lyrics changed and used two Belisha beacons which were used in a football-cum-rugby match "that made Sedgefield's Shrovetide game tame by comparison".

Even in sombre Stockton, people let their hair down. "Those who sought their homes after midnight had their way illuminated by an amazing display of sheet lightning while thunder roared in the distance recalling to the more imaginative the flashes of the worst nights of the air raids."

The air raids, though, were over. It was safe once again to talk about the weather.

SUCH scenes were repeated on Wednesday, August 15, when, at midnight, the new Prime Minister, Clement Attlee, announced that Japan had surrendered.

In Thornaby, reported the Echo, "the announcement was followed by a rapid awakening of almost everybody. Crowds, many still clad in night attire, assembled round bonfires and roamed streets singing".

Despite the early morning enthusiasm, the difficulty with VJ Day was that three months after the great victory, life in Britain was hard and showed few signs of easing rapidly.

Plus, days earlier the Allies had detonated the first atomic bombs and the Echo's letters columns were full of the debate.

There were spontaneous street parties on VJ Day, but the mood is perhaps best summed up by the Echo's report of Darlington's reaction.

"Crowds were thinner and less boisterous than they were on VE Day, " it said. "Even so, thousands of people thronged the principal streets of the town."

Forever in the memory

JOHN CORNWALL remembers his VE Day party in the Denes area of Darlington quite distinctly.

"It was held outside my mother's house, No 44 Fairfield Street, and she had a piano and she got it out in the street and there was a chap down the road - Mr Lockwood his name was - and he played it.

Celebrating: Youngsters at the Fairfield Street VE Day party in Darlington.

"Then he got up and sang Jerusalem, a real deep throaty voice and bristling moustache, and everyone was applauding and the women had the tears and were crying."

John was eight at the time, and as he talks the memories flood back. "I can remember my Auntie Florrie and Mrs Petty, who lived up the street at No 62, doing Knees Up Mother Brown, " he said. "It was quite a party."

He is on the children's group picture, above.

"You can see me poking out on the right (second from the back).

I'm supposed to be a pirate, " he said. "I'm wearing someone's bleeding headscarf ! I wasn't very happy.

I wanted to be a cowboy! My cousin got to be a cowboy."

As well as the residents of Fairfield Street, people from Coronation Street, Stewart Street, Sedgwick Street and Willow Road East joined in the party.

"There was a long trestle table in the middle of the street, and all the chairs were brought out, " said John. "The women baked and cooked, but there was only scones and sausage rolls, jelly and custard and that bubble pudding, as we used to call it." He meant sago pudding.

"They'd plugged lights into the bayonet fittings in the ceiling of the houses and hung the lights out the windows on the night time, " he said.

"It was dark when we all went off to kip and I could hear the party going on with the adults into the night. We had a ball."