Druslyn Road, West Cross, VE Day Party, May 1945

Edited by Kate Jones and Carol Powell

This year, Britain is commemorating the 75th anniversary of the end of the Second World War - Victory in Europe (VE) Day on 8th May and Victory over Japan (VJ) Day on 15th August.  As with all areas, the people of the Parish of Oystermouth had endured six long years of  worrying about their husbands, sons and daughters, away serving in the forces (87 who would not be returning) and suffering the war-time privations of Blackout,  'Make-do-and-mend' and Rationing at home (this last would continue until 1954).

             Now finally it was over. There would be dances, bonfires, fireworks, lifeboat trips  and of course, Street parties. This collection of 'street party' photographs donated over the years, has recorded these momentous Mumbles days for posterity and will doubtless bring back memories for many. 

David Spooner who lived in Victoria Avenue recalls the excitement of the party and how it involved Stanley Street as well, and possibly Queen’s Road too. ‘Mother got everything she could but how they managed to make stuff I don’t know. She must have been saving up rations.’

Geoffrey Cottle has supplied names for some of those shown above-

Carl Thomas is the boy on the left hand chair, looking towards camera, who lived in the house subsequently knocked down to left side going up Glen Road.

Brian James, sitting next, lived in the cottage, one of a pair just down the road from the Beaufort Public House, on the opposite side of Norton Road, ie just below the old grocers shop.

Isabel Hopkins is the lady standing on the right, the wife of the coal merchant who lived in Glen Road, just above Norton Cross.

Greta Walters, née Delve, is the lady to the back right, who lived in the last house of the row of cottages, running from the cross to Boyd’s shop.

Three other boys have been identified as Donald Winston, Alan Ockwell  and a ginger head lad with surname Sanders, who lived in Glen Road. 

Libby Morris has identified her mother Pat, (known as Patty) Gammon as the little girl standing on the far left, who married David Vaughan and later lived in West Cross. Patty was the daughter of Connie and  Tom Gammon, sister to John and Gerry Gammon. 

Mary Colburn I remember a frenzy of activity as preparations were made for the party. The bonfire in Stanley Street which had to be extinguished due to its proximity to the petrol pumps then at Pressdee’s Garage. The dancing and happy faces; the laughter and relief; the silence of the air raid siren, which had been so much a feature of our young lives.

 A few weeks later during the summer holidays, my Mother took me to stay in Kent with a friend of hers, who had been in service with her many years before. My father could not accompany us, as he could not take time off from his two-man business.     

          We returned a fortnight later, having heard in London, that the War in the far-east was about to end. We were met at Swansea Station by my solemn–faced father, to be told that my grandmother had suffered a stroke and was very ill.

She died a few days later on 13 August 1945.

Outside, the village was in high spirits as it prepared for the celebrations of VJ day. There was to be a party for all the children in the school-yard opposite Gran’s cottage, on the afternoon she was to be buried. My mother insisted I attend the party, so dressed up in a home-made Able Seaman’s uniform, I joined the others at trestle tables and ate the savouries, cakes and jellies, which the village mothers had somehow managed to find and prepare out of their stocks of wartime rations.

          Across the road and hidden from us by the wall of the school-yard, the mourners assembled for Gran’s funeral and then followed her hearse to the cemetery.

Richard Evans. We were in the northern Italian city of Ferrara when VE DAY declared and we were ordered to move to Vienna.  This was a city full of 3rd Line Russian soldiers who were not fussy who they killed as the raped and looted a flattened Vienna.  I think everyone had just about had enough and the question was 'when do we go home'.  Eventually the great day came and after spending weeks in Transit Camps across Europe we finally crossed the Channel enroute for demob areas.

Six years away from all that one holds dear was a long time and I was worried about a pair of cricket boots I had left in the park Cricket pavilion when called up all those years before.

John Cumming. I was serving as a forward observation signaller with the 1st Medium Artillery Unit in Burma. We were on a detached forward unit of one Coy of Gherka a battery of 5.5 guns clearing the road from Mandalay towards Rangoon.

          We knew about VE day because we usually managed to listen to and read the Reuter report in morse code most days.

          On VE day, we were being held up by a Japanese force, which had fortified a village behind a small river. Any advance we made was immediately shelled by 75mm guns, which we then had to knock out. Altogether the Japanese had set up 6 gun positions and used each one separately as we destroyed  the others, which took some time.

          When we then attempted to enter the village, we encountered a large minefield in the area of the bridge and more time was lost making a ford for vehicles while the Ghurkas cleared the remaining Japanese before we could move on to the next village.

          One particular memory of this village was the very effective ‘barbed wire’ protection presented by a plantation of pineapple plants whose strong spiked leaves meant we didn’t have to face a bayonet charge.

I was a Prisoner of the Japanese

Gwynne Hodge was a good Welsh international gymnast, the longest serving table tennis league player in Swansea and a Welsh weightlifting champion.

He was a prisoner of the Japanese, since his ship, HMS Exeter, was sunk on 1st March 1942. 

In August 1945 he was at the Macassor death camp when he heard of the end of the war. 'There was much speculation as the rumour spread  that the war was over. We waited apprehensively as the Dutch Commandant climbed on to the platform and began to speak in Dutch. We listened without comprehending, but as he spoke we began to sense his meaning, confirmed for us by a Dutchman in the ranks who muttered, ''The war is over, The war is over.'' Pandemonium broke loose; tears, shouts, screams, kissing and hand-shaking'.

    He had only been in Perth a few days and was queuing for his pay at a barracks, when he collapsed. He spent the next few weeks in Hollywood Hospital, but Gwynne said 'almost the only time anyone was in bed was at visiting time, as we went over the fence into town, if we were able to do so.'

   When they left on the HMS Maidstone, each of them carried an Australian Red Cross hospitality parcel containing some foods they had not seen for the past three and half years.

May 8th, 2015 will mark the 70th anniversary of VE Day, the unconditional surrender of the armed forces of Nazi Germany and the destruction of Hitler’s Third Reich, followed on August 15th by VJ Day. 

    It is probably the last time that the generation who fought that conflict – in foreign combat and on the Home Front – will be able to assemble in numbers, a final chance for succeeding generations to offer thanks for their labour and sacrifice and the part they played in the triumph over a uniquely evil creed.

Quiet celebration for victory in war and its ensuing peace seem the order of VE Day 2015.