Letters added meaning to 72nd anniversary of Monday’s Victory in Europe Day
Today, May 8, is the 72nd anniversary of VE Day, marking the end of the Second World War in Europe, which now has more meaning for me after a discovery I made while clearing out my parents’ house following their deaths. In an upstairs closet, I came upon a box of several bundles of airmail letters tied with red ribbons and a note saying, “Letters written from 1943 to 1946 between Harry and Helen.”
Inside were 609 letters they wrote while my father was serving overseas as a musician in the Royal Canadian Air Force Band. At the time, my mother, Helen Reeder, worked in the Department of Munitions and Supply in Ottawa, and later at the Toronto Transportation Commission, as it was then known, doing what would have been a man’s job. Reading through their correspondence, I found not just romantic language, but a detailed account of what was happening on both sides of the Atlantic.
The two met in 1942 at a Victory Bond fundraiser in Ottawa, where Helen was a volunteer server and Harry Culley was playing in the band. They dated for close to a year and became engaged just before he was sent to England.
Harry endured bombings in London, food scarcity, and the exhaustion of travelling by trains, buses and army trucks with irregular schedules to perform in concerts, parades and dances. But he and the other musicians knew that they were keeping up the spirits of soldiers and civilians during times of heavy bombings.
He wrote to her about accompanying the famed Irving Berlin at the Pavilion in Bournemouth and playing for King George VI and Queen Elizabeth at the Beaver Club in London. He talked about seeing the bombed-out shell of Coventry Cathedral and tried to explain to her what a buzz bomb sounded like: “Just imagine the biggest truck you’ve ever seen going up a street like Winnett [where Helen lived in Toronto]. There’d be quite a vibration in the houses.”
On VE Day, Harry wrote, “This is the day we’ve all been waiting for. It’s pretty hard to realize now that the war is over . . . we went down to the beach [at Bournemouth] where there was a huge bonfire going on the sand with hundreds of people around it singing old songs.” And Helen wrote: “What a day honey! I’m still going around in a daze. Oh darling, the thoughts of seeing you again thrill me. Even the air feels different.”
Of their letters, Helen said, “We’ll bind them up and read them over about twenty years from now.” I don’t think they ever re-read the letters – they were too busy living the lives they had dreamed about all those years before. Love in the Air: Second World War Letters, is available in the Peterborough Public Library, at Chapters in the biography section, at www.friesenpress.com, and Amazon, more information at www.joanneculley.com. joanne.culley@sympatico.ca