VE Day – why they were celebrating then, and what it tells us now

Philip Grant, of Wembley History Society, reflects on difficult times, past and present.

‘Wembley Goes Gay!’ If you saw that headline now, you would think it was about a Pride march. But that was the headline in a local newspaper exactly 75 years ago, marking the borough’s celebrations for VE Day, the end of the Second World War in Europe.

1. "The Wembley News" title, from a 1944 edition. (From a copy collected by the late Richard Graham)

I had hoped to show the actual headline, which I saw on a microfilm some years ago, but I have been “staying at home” for nearly two months. With our libraries also now closed, and my friends at Brent Archives working from home, they have not been able to access the local newspaper microfilms to retrieve it for me. 

I first thought of writing an article to mark this 75^th anniversary before the Covid-19 emergency. I can’t help seeing some similarities, as well as differences, between the situation now, and what it was like, in the Wembley area in particular, during the Second World War. Will we have a party to celebrate when the coronavirus outbreak is over, as it certainly will be, one day?

2. A street party in Church Lane, Kingsbury, 1945. (From “Brent’s War”, published by Brent Libraries, 1995)

There was good reason to celebrate then. Britain had been at war for nearly six years when the remnants of Hitler’s German regime surrendered in May 1945, but the shadow of the conflict had hung over the country for even longer. In December 1937, the government asked local councils to start making air raid precautions (“ARP”). Early the following year, because of fears that Germany would use poison gas as a weapon against civilians, and not just on battlefields as in the “Great War”, millions of gas masks started to be issued.

Wembley’s choice for its ARP Officer in February 1938 may have surprised some. Jack Eddas, had been appointed as an Entertainments Manager in 1937, a temporary post to organise celebrations for King George VI’s coronation, and the Urban District being elevated to Borough status. The Council had seen how good his organisational skills were, and chose the right man. 

Within a few weeks, he had started recruiting Air Raid Wardens, and setting up a training programme. His planning would see 2,500 wardens in place by the time war was declared. Some were employed full-time, at £3 a week, but 95% of the men and women were volunteers. They were organised into teams, based on eighty warden posts across the borough, fifty of these in specially built blast-proof shelters.

3. Wembley's Warden Post No. 32, c.1939. (Image, possibly IWM Collection, from a 1964 magazine article)

When the photo above was taken, the wardens had yet to be given uniforms, just a helmet and an ARP lapel badge. They had named Post 32 “Bell & Rattle”, after the equipment they were given to signal the all clear to, and threat of, gas attacks. Fortunately, no poison gas bombs were dropped, but air raids on Wembley began, with incendiary bombs, on 27 August 1940.

4. 443-449 Kingsbury Road, after the 25 September 1940 bombing. (Brent Archives online image 8536)

The borough’s first fatalities were suffered a month later. This time the Luftwaffe dropped parachute mines, a 500kg weapon that drifted through the air to kill indiscriminately (like the tiny droplets that carry the coronavirus). On the night of 25 September, Daisy Cowley and her baby son Robert, and Maud Hawkins and her 7-year old daughter Barbara, died in their flats above shops in Kingsbury Road. Minutes later, married couples John and Iris Pool and their neighbours, Bill and Caroline Western, were killed in their homes at District Road, Sudbury.

The King and Queen paid a surprise visit to the rescue services and survivors of the Sudbury blast. King George VI praised the wonderful spirit of the local people. Wembley had to survive many more months of “the Blitz”, until May 1941, although it got off quite lightly compared to some places. Keeping up morale was important, and messages of encouragement from the Mayor were part of the way that was done, then as now.

5. A message from the Mayor of Wembley to ARP workers. (Wembley A.R.P. Magazine, December 1940)

The Civil Defence workers whose efforts the Mayor was commending were more than just ARP Wardens. Other branches of the service included trained Rescue Teams, First Aid and Casualty Ambulance Units. These were based at a variety of locations around the borough, and would be called out from a control centre in the basement of the Town Hall, in Forty Lane. It was manned 24 hours a day by volunteers from the Council’s staff, who responded to emergency reports ‘phoned in by the wardens.

6. "Coat of arms" of one Wembley First Aid Post, and Mobile Unit from another. (Photo from Brent Archives)

The home-made “coat of arms” above was designed by a nurse’s husband, for her First Aid Post at Preston Manor School. The photograph shows the team at First Aid Post No. 5, based at a sports ground in East Lane. The nurse all in white was a Sister from Wembley Hospital, who led the team when she was not on duty there. In the days before the NHS, Wembley had a “voluntary hospital” in Chaplin Road, which opened in 1928. It was funded by charitable donations, a week-long summer Carnival and Fete, and a scheme where over 20,000 local residents paid sixpence a month, for free treatment in the “public wards” if they needed it.

A wartime Auxiliary Fire Service (“AFS”) was organised by Wembley’s professional Fire Brigade, set up in 1935 after forty years of a volunteer brigade. As well as their new fire stations at Harrow Road and Kingsbury Circle (now an ambulance station), it had units based at four garages across the borough. Their busiest night in Wembley was on “Black Friday”, 15/16 November 1940. Around 3,000 incendiary bombs were dropped, resulting in 62 separate call-outs. Many homes and business premises were damaged or burnt out.

7. Newspaper report of three A.F.S. deaths, “Wembley News” 17 January 1941. (Brent Archives microfilms)

As the article above shows, three of Wembley’s AFS volunteers died when a bomb fell beside their vehicle, close to St Paul’s Cathedral, as they were helping to fight fires in the City of London in January 1941. The widespread incendiary bomb attacks meant that, from February, compulsory Fire Guard duties were imposed on all eligible adults. Around 25,000 people, almost a quarter of Wembley’s total population then, had to spend 12 hours a week on fire-watching duties, organised on a rota system by ARP wardens for residential areas.

That was just one of the restrictions on everyday life that people had to put up with during the war. There was also rationing of food and other items. Petrol could only be obtained for essential business use. Travel to some places was restricted. The police were watchful, and shopkeepers, or anyone else who broke the rules, could be fined, or even sent to prison. As we see now, sometimes curbs on basic freedoms during an emergency are necessary.

Between May 1941 and February 1943, there was a lull in the bombing, but the ARP services had to stay vigilant. In February 1944, a pair of semi-detached Council houses at Birchen Close took a direct hit from a high-explosive bomb on a Saturday evening. Eight members of the Whitfield family and seven members of the Metcalfe family were killed. Even though they had lived just across the road from the graveyard at Old St Andrew’s Church, Kingsbury, they were buried at Alperton Cemetery, as was the case for all Wembley’s bombing victims. 

We have seen recently, in the news, the grim scenes of mass graves in New York City. Wembley also had contingency plans, and a site set aside, in case mass burials were needed. Thankfully they were not, so allotment-holders at Birchen Grove needn’t worry when digging!

8. Wembley Borough Council's WW2 Roll of Honour memorial. (Currently in storage at Brent Museum)

ARP Warden Henry Randall was injured by the blast from the Birchen Close bomb in February 1944, and died in hospital two days later. His name is on Wembley Council’s memorial to its staff who died ‘in the service of their country’ during the war, as is that of Horace Townley. He was killed when a bomb hit his ARP Post in Alperton, two weeks later. Albert Brooker, Stanley Conniff and William Knight, the three AFS men who died in 1941, are also honoured. They too had worked for the Council, as well as volunteering to be firefighters in their own time.

9. Photos of V1 Flying Bomb damage, from a recently rediscovered album. (With thanks to Jo Locke)

The final onslaught Wembley’s Civil Defence services had to deal with was V1 Flying Bombs. Fourteen of these “doodlebugs” fell on the borough between June and September 1944, and the first on 19 June was particularly hard to bear. Among the victims at Station Approach, Sudbury, were Cecil and Alice Hyatt, both ARP Wardens. Their son was in the Casualty Ambulance Unit based at Barham Park, and had married a young lady from that team earlier in the war. His wife, Joan, and their 2-year old son Rodney, also died at his parents’ home.

The second photo above shows Wembley Hill School, which was destroyed by a V1 in July. Luckily no pupils or teachers were in the building, but William Harris, on Fire Guard duty, was killed. For the rest of the war its pupils had to be spread around other local schools, meaning class sizes of 50 or more. Copland School was built on the site in the early 1950s.

At the end of 1944, some of the wartime censorship restrictions were lifted, and the full extent of the bombing and casualties was made public. Around 9,000 bombs had been dropped on Wembley, and more than half the homes in the borough had suffered some damage, with 528 being completely destroyed. 149 people had been killed in the air raids, over 400 seriously injured, and a similar number less badly hurt. Sadly, when the final figure for Covid-19 deaths in the area is known, it may be more than the wartime fatalities.

10. VE Day games at Audrey Gardens, Sudbury Court Estate - the potato in the bucket race.

11. VE Day games at Audrey Gardens - catching the train race. (Both photos courtesy of Judith Meredith)

With what local people had endured, it is little wonder that Wembley celebrated VE Day. As well as parties, neighbours came together to organise other simple entertainments, like the games for children shown in the photos above. They could finally relax, have fun, and look forward to a brighter future. The little girl in the race above thought the war ending would mean sweets were no longer rationed, but as now, it would take time for normal life to return.

 

One thing that the Second World War and the current emergency have in common is the number of people ‘doing just that bit extra for their neighbours’, as Wembley’s Mayor put it in his 1940 message. That community effort, as well as the vital efforts of those in the NHS, care services and other key workers, are something to be thankful for, and to build on in future.

12. The Defence Medal, for Second World War service. (Brent Museum, object no. 1977.166f)

How will we remember those efforts? Some people have suggested a medal, and there was one for civilians who had served on the “home front” for at least three years between 1938 and 1945. You can find out more about The Defence Medal, and about Wembley’s ARP services, on the Brent Museum website.

 

Another medal was the MBE, awarded to Jack Eddas in the 1941 New Year Honours. His work in preparing Wembley Council’s ARP services not only helped to save lives in the borough. It showed how an effective organisation should be run, and helped guide and provide training advice to other Councils across Middlesex.

Will there be “Roll of Honour” boards to remember those who have died from Covid-19, while working to look after others during the outbreak? That is something to think about, as we remember VE Day, 75 years ago, and why it was celebrated. Please feel free to share your own views.

Philip Grant.