Nice day yesterday with every organisation seemingly getting into it. Union flags abounded with none of the usual suspects getting their knickers in a twist about it. The only downside was at my over 50,s group the lack of knowledge even from those over 75 have of the 40,s in general on the quiz i did. Some actual thought that the yanks entered the war in 1944 the same year of the pearl harbour attack. Then they,ll moan about the kids lack of knowledge and interest in subjects.

Pearl Harbor was bombed in 1941.

Or is that your point?


Confused of Shotton Colliery.

I blame teachers!

i know that. you know it but others did not.

Did.WW1 and WW2 ever get a mention in history lessons at school or was it too ‘modern’ to be classed as history ?

will depend on when you were at school i guess. mine finished with the unification of italy and germany which when i look back now was closer to my present age than VE day now is when i was born. now i guess it might be but god knows how they present it or change the facts to suit modern tastes. could easily see it about how minorities won the war and there part in it.

Thought so, but in my defence your sentence could be read in more than one way.

We had a bugler playing "The Last Post" in his back yard at 12 noon yesterday. He had also hoisted an unfeasibly large Union Jack, which the neighbours either side of him probably thought was a total eclipse of the sun.

I'd been out clearing the crap blocking the kitchen out-pipe - and I must admit I enjoyed this unexpected but very welcome ceremony.

In a fit of extreme patriotism, I immediately put down me tools and stood to attention until he'd finished - much to the amusement of our lass who was "supervising" me via the kitchen window.

A most surprising and emotional start to the afternoon, and yet another reason why it's never boring being exiled in Shotton.

The wife had some concert thing on the telly which was a bit like the Phoenix club..also, people were saying they were celebrating the end of the war, but it didn’t actually end till September…..the poor buggers fighting the Japanese might have a different opinion.

This is never publicised, the U.K. atomic bomb tests after WW2 where the troops were taken to a beach told to turn there backs to the ocean and cover their eyes with their hands.
https://youtu.be/KRz2B8HAAXk?si=hkK3K75RWXl5pl6QK

I would have liked to have seen an atomic test from a distance. A safe distance that is. An air burst of course. No fallout.

Anyway what's it got to do with VE day?

Just Jamie trying to put a dampener on it.
The tests were very well publicised, I worked with a bloke who’d taken part, it became an obsession with him…understandably so.

apart from those fighting the japs it was the end of the war for civilians. nothing to stop us celebrating VJ day as well when that comes up.

‘Apart from the Japs’….
Plenty of servicemen were still dying fighting some of the most vicious troops of the war…my dad’s mate had the pleasure of being in one of their appalling prison camps….in fact my old feller wouldn’t take a lift in my Japanese car.

the worst thing was the lack of publicity all that got for some reason only we can guess. your dads mate was not on his own by a long way with many people telling similar true tales. worked with an inspector on the buses who was in a jap pow camp whose wife did not recognise him when he was brought back to this country. he was a bike and music fiend who would not purchase a single thing made in japan. something that i never heard from one who was in a german pow camp.

The father in law was captured with the rear guard at Dunkirk and apart from the last year of the war was working on a farm…never complained once , but never complained in general….the German officer who captured them spoke immaculate English after three years at Oxford and asked them if they had any marmalade or jam.

one thing though is when VJ comes up japanese autrocities will not get a mention but suspect the dropping of the atom bombs will provoke some discussion.

Well the alternative invasion would have cost millions of lives, but they won’t let the silly old facts get in the way of the truth.

Or.... Truman didn't want the Soviets to join in with the war on Japan as they would be able to demand a slice of it. He also wanted to demo the bomb to Stalin.

They got a bit of Japan anyway and still have it today.
They turned up at the very last minute too when declaring war on Japan.
Despite the intrigues, it was still the most sensible option to drop the bombs from a casualty angle.

But the US got exclusivity.

Anyway there are learned and credible people on both the justified and unjustified side of the argument. A really interesting period of history.