1945 and all that

THE forthcoming 80th anniversary of VE Day sort of feels rather final; a last opportunity to think about World War Two while there are still people who were around at the time, and can still remember it.

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The number of survivors who were actually old enough to be in the armed forces during WW2 is now very small and getting smaller, and much of the forthcoming media coverage will depend on talking to those who were children at the time.

(Your correspondent is due to give a talk to elderly people in a residential home next week about VE Day in Bristol, and frankly I'm terrified that I'm going to get told off for getting something wrong, but that's my problem.)

The memory remains powerful even for those of us born after the war's end. It's part of the folklore of every community and every family. Those of us from the postwar "Baby Boom" generation grew up listening to our parents' memories. Your grandparents hardly even talked about World War One, but your mum and dad never stopped talking about World War Two.

We played on bomb-sites and in disused pill boxes and watched movies and TV dramas set in the war. Boys made model Spitfires, made machine-gun noises in the school playground and many could discourse with some authority on the relative merits of Allied and Axis tanks.