Lest we forget and a time to reflect It maybe a struggle, the struggle maybe long and difficult, but we shall not fail.
My grandmother always talked about the war, when I was a boy. She wasn’t the greatest of grandmothers but she was my grandmother. During the war she looked after her youngest son, my uncle whilst her older daughters including my mother were evacuated to the country. She remained living in the Greater London area, dodging the bombs and taking shelter down Gants Hill tube station (Central Line) as and when the Germans were bombing. She often referred to things like rationing and what she called the Doodlebugs. I have tried to relay these stories to Mrs Ash and our daughter. I think after 6 years of COVID19 lockdown we would be pretty relieved aswell and as relieved and jubilant as those celebrating in May 1945.
Remarkable photography, I have a lot of photos from that era taken by relatives and my father even some from the north African war theatre and Italy and later Palestine, he served 1942 to 1947, he volunteered in 1942 at the end of his study as a Chemist he had skills valuable to the war effort. I did not get on well with my dad a lot because of his alcoholism, but he always played down his part in the war and always made out that he never thought he really killed anyone in battle, but he had constant nightmares when I was a child I remember him voicing out during the night it would wake me up, he only ever once said to me that is was not as easy as he had been telling me, we would probably call it PTSD these days but they, that generation, just lived with it for the rest of their lives. Rare to see real colour photography from that era, and almost all of that is real in my opinion and not colourised the tonal qualities of the images tell me that, hard to replicate with computers even today, and it is remarkable documentary work a lot of those images look like medium format or half plate format given the quality and detail. The bus in the crater there is something about that which takes me back to how the world felt in the early 1960s, colour in our life and surroundings was somehow less saturated than it sometimes appears today, indeed most of these pictures make me feel that way.
i was born at home in balsall heath road in birmingham in 1948. lived there for 9 years. i can still remember the walk to my first school--past rows of flattened buildings and craters in the ground. my mum and dad were married just before the war--but soon parted as dad was an RAF technician and was sent to south africa. Mum was in the civil defence and an ambulance driver in birmingham. i think she saw more of the war than dad did.
My uncle Clive had PTSD,hung himself from the stair Bannister in his house.He was in Borneo,the Malaya campaign,and showed me a black and white photo when I was a kid of him standing beside two heads.
You know I am about to tell myself and all of you that I am completely wrong, I've managed to find Black and White versions of similar photographs not these specific photos which are taken from an identical perspective but it looks like the original was B&W and at the same time full colour versions exist as well from exactly the same perspective, that can't happen and no one would make deliberate old fashioned B&W versions from a colour original. I found B&W and colour versions of the bus in a crater taken from a different angle than the picture in the linked article, so my interpretation of the quality of the colour images was wrong. Manipulation of the images does not detract from their message, it was hard then, we who are still alive today are hugely privileged to have had the lives we have had even with all the ups and downs and all the political division we have had to endure over the last 75 years since VE day, no matter what side of the political fence we sit on, it could have been much worse and we should all be thankful for the sacrifice and sheer effort of our parents and grandparents and in some cases great grandparents.
Unfortunately I can only see that one picture. I never saw any pictures like that. My grandmother didn’t own a camera. But her descriptions were vivid.
It should take you to Facebook John and the right and left scrolling should work. Click on the picture and then you are in Facebook, just hit the "right arrow" navigation key on your keyboard to see the next image I would be surprised if that is not working.
I got access to them through Googling the poster. Yes, some amazing photos. They don’t look so long ago being in colour. I was born n 1955 so only 10 years or so later.
Today I have been explaining the difference to my daughter between the Churchill victory salute and the more familiar “two-fingered salute”. She asked me about that today
I was born 14 years after the war, yeah I remember those times, colour, Kodacolor didn't exist in 1940 but it did in 1942, Kodachrome existed from 1935 and was really special, on reflection it is very unlikely that enough Kodachrome would have been available in 1940 for these images.
Churchill used to do it the vulgar (UK vulgar) way but it seems to be intrinsic now in Asia to use that version some do the palm forward version for peace but it is interchangeable over there.
Whilst hoping this thread would not descend into negativity, but a celebration of the day, as I understand the and I quote UK vulgar version of the V sign I believe Mr Churchill gestured palm in (offensive) but later commonly adopted the palm out approach. Again perhaps Mr Churchill noted historically that "English soldiers waved their fingers at French soldiers who had threatened to cut off captured archers' first two fingers to prevent them shooting arrows. The English were thus boasting they were still capable of doing so. Churchill was careful (mostly) to give his version of the V-sign with the knuckles facing in. The gesture was to acquire a whole new meaning—defiance, yes, but also hope, determination and victory—and was to go down in history not only as the trademark of the man but a symbol of the resolution of a whole nation. So determination, hope, determination and most of all victory
It was an observation, a cultural observation, it is used continuously in the Philippines it is almost impossible to take a photo where someone does not use that sign and they use it innocently they don't know that culturally there is a different interpretation in the UK. The archers theory seems to be deemed to be a legend, the English longbow required three fingers not two. In the 1940s Churchill was, it appears, initially unaware of that the gesture was considered vulgar, for me personally the vulgar interpretation is simply what I grew up with, if I made that sign to someone in my youth they would likely have beat me up, I haven't seen anyone in the UK use that gesture knuckles out in decades. The current usage in Asia seems to stem from it being adopted as a peace symbol during the Vietnam war by the anti war movement. My father was one of those who rejected Churchill's leadership at the end of the war, I remember him telling me how despised Churchill was after the war although he was respected as a war leader, I also remember watching the funeral in 1965 in B&W we watched as a family and I realised at the time that someone very special had died, and I still have the memorial Churchill Crown coin that my father purchased at that time.
My post says the first 2 fingers therefore making the Archers hand un-usable, thats how I understood it. Yes Mr Churchill was the right man at the right time and went down in history as such. Both men had their detractors and yet both have gone down in history as being a symbol of determination and much much more.
For clarity on the v sign. I watched Darkest Hour yesterday and in it Churchill is giving the reverse v sign and a photograph of him doing that is captured in a newspaper article that his secretary reads and she assures him it means “up your bum”! Anybody see that ? It is watchable on BBC iPlayer but was on BBC tv last night. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000j4wd
