This letter to my father written on VEDay+1 by my grandmother, describes her experiences of the celebrations that went on both locally in Lewisham and across London on VE Day 1945. In it she talks about the period of disbelief they all felt that the war was actually over and then Churchill’s announcement which confirmed it was. She writes movingly about the sound of the planes with the POWs coming home and the excitement of seeing so many lights again. I think it is a very moving piece of social history.
My father David Collen was born and brought up in Lewisham. He went to fight in Italy as a 2nd Lieutenant 5th Battalion Sherwood Foresters in 1943 aged 18 years. He landed in Salerno and fought at the Battles of the Volturno River and Monte Cassino. In 1945 he fought on the Gustav Line before being hospitalised with what he called in his letters home “Shell Shock”.
David was the precious only son of my grandparents Dora and Dudley Collen from Clarendon Rise in Lewisham. Dudley had fought in the Sherwood Foresters in WW1 and received the Military Cross. During WW2 he worked as a Pharmaceutical Chemist in Lewisham High Street and also as a fire warden for his local area. Dora, my grandmother was a professional singer with the BBC Symphony Chorus and worked all through WW2. She sang on the sound tracks for movies of the time including Henry V and also those with Vera Lynn (whom she met).
My grandmother wrote to my father almost every day while he was in Italy during the war. The letters contain graphic details of their lives during the London Blitz but they also show the love she had for her only son and the fear that haunted her daily. I never knew the letters existed until after my father died in 2009. On clearing out the family home we found the file of Dora’s hand written wartime letters in my father’s filing cabinet. This was one of those 127 letters she wrote.
I also attach a photo of Dora, Dudley and David Collen taken in 1944 before David left for Italy.
