VE Day – Victory in Europe – saw some serious partying around the county!
On that day Ross-on-Wye student teacher Barbara Sharpe (nee Philips) took the train to Hereford for the newly opened May Fair: “My luck was in: I won two glasses and a toy dog!”
Jean Muldowney, meanwhile, joined a conga on Hereford’s Castle Green, a band blasting out Glen Miller’s In The Mood, as she danced her way into High Town.
Yet 5,000 miles away Bulmer Avenue’s Don Cornford was struggling to stay alive, a prisoner of war slaving on Burma’s notorious Death Railway. Don wasn’t released until VJ Day – Victory Japan Day – in August 1945.
Now Herefordshire Libraries and Herefordshire Lore are coming together to remember the men, women and children affected by the War in 80:80. Between May’s VE Day and August’s VJ Day we will collect 80 stories, items, photos and memories to mark the war. They will be published on the county Libraries’ Herefordshire History website, herefordshirehistory.org.uk
In Our Age editor Marsha O’Mahony, editor of Herefordshire Lore’s In Our Age, will open 80:80 at Hereford’s city library in the Town Hall from 10.00 to 12.30 on Thursday’s VE Day: “We often mark such events by looking at the men serving in the Armed Forces, but the war touched everyone – mothers, evacuees, POWs at home and abroad. And even school children and evacuees: everyone paid a price for the war years.”
Join Marsha if you can at:
- Hereford Library: VE Day May 8 Thursday, 10.00 – 12.30
- Ross Library: May 15 Thursday, 10.00 – 12.30
- Ledbury Library: May 22 Thursday, 10.00 – 12.30
- Leominster Library: May 29 Thursday, 10.00 – 12.30
- Hereford Library: June 5 Thursday, 10.00 – 12.30