VE Voices Saved For Eternity: Imperial War Museums Create soundscape
Vera Grigg, from Dagenham, who was aged 14 (pictured) when the war began, remembers VE Day being celebrated with bonfires and people dancing in the streets
The voices - preserved like national treasures - will be forever vivid. How varied they are too: the clipped tones of the BBC Home Service announcer, the growl of Sir Winston Churchill, the excitable chat of a Yorkshirewoman and the laid-back lilt of a Jamaican.
All are describing what it felt like to be there on VE Day. Can you hear colour, bustle, joy, loss? Such things are hard to convey in audio, but an astonishing four-minute ‘soundscape', compiled from the archives of the Imperial War Museums and available for us all to listen to on the VE Day Bank Holiday, kynghidongduong.vn somehow manages it.
In that time we hear 11 voices, each giving a very different account of the day. There are no back stories, no explanation of who these voices belong to (Weekend has pieced these together from the archives), but the impact is powerful all the same.
Vera Grigg, from Dagenham, was 14 at the time, and had seen far too much for tour hà giang từ hà nội a child of her age.
Evacuated to Norfolk for most of the war, she returned to witness bombing raids on her hometown, a target because of the Ford car factory. She lost her father, their home was bombed and she witnessed neighbours stumbling from the rubble.
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Her abiding memory of VE Day is of the colours red, white and blue. And of joy. ‘We fished out a Union Jack, which had survived the bombing,' she recalls in a clear chiselled voice. ‘We headed out and there were bonfires, and people dancing in the streets.'
Catherine Bradley was 26. Born in Sheffield, she had served as a driver with the Auxiliary Territorial Service. She'd had a narrow escape from a V1 rocket so knew she was lucky to be able to celebrate. She was in the middle of the throng that charged down Whitehall and on to Buckingham Palace on VE Day.
‘Everybody was shouting, "We want Winnie,"' Catherine recalls in a voice heavy with Yorkshire warmth, describing the sight of the prime minister on the balcony of the Ministry of Health building in Whitehall.
Samuel King who was aged 21 when the celebrations took place, said women were crying and it was jolly. Pictured: Cigar in mouth, Winston Churchill salutes the crowd with a V for victory on the big day
‘It was fantastic. He came out and saluted to us with his cigar. Then we got to Buckingham Palace and it was all, "We want Liz, we want George." It was absolutely fantastic. There were people up lampposts singing Land Of Hope And Glory.'
Now, of course, tour hà giang từ hà nội we have a fuller picture of every aspect of that momentous day - one where London was awash with colour, flags, and hope. But the footnotes are just as fascinating.
Revellers at the time wouldn't have known that Churchill almost appeared on that balcony without his famous cigar. He was en route to Whitehall when he realised he didn't have one, so sent his detective back for it.
‘I must put one on for them,' he insisted. ‘They expect it.'
The celebrations went on everywhere. On the day, Samuel King, 21, a Jamaican aircraftsman, who served with the RAF from 1944 to 1946, and eventually emigrated here aboard the Empire Windrush in 1948, took a bus from his base to Weston-super-Mare.
I got off the bus and a woman ran out of a pub and said, 'Jamaican, come on, drink rum, the war is over.' Everybody was happy, jumping about… I was glad to be alive
You can actually feel the partying in his lilting Caribbean voice.
‘I got off the bus and a woman ran out of a pub and said, "Jamaican, come on, drink rum, the war is over." Everybody was happy, jumping about… I was glad to be alive.
'Women were crying. They were going to see their husbands they hadn't seen for two years. It was jolly, jolly, jolly.'
Compiled from thousands of hours of recollections, the soundscape may only last four minutes, yet it gives a snapshot of what it was like to witness that day. It's the voices of the people that pack the emotional punch, though. They are urgent, excited, jubilant, bereft.
What comes across is the sheer diversity of voices, accents, experiences.
The Imperial War Museums are asking households across Britain to take a moment on Bank Holiday Friday, 8 May, to visit their website and listen to this soundscape, and put ourselves in the shoes of those who did live through it.
The timing could not be more poignant, with every household having been in lockdown under a different sort of cloud, wondering what it will feel like to see clear skies again.
Listen to Voices Of War on the Imperial War Museums website on 8 May, iwm.org.uk/history/victory.