The Daily Telegraph - Saturday - Saturday
‘There was a feeling of release’
BETTY WEBB AT THE VE DAY CELEBRATIONS IN CENTRAL LONDON
On May 7 1945, Germany signed the formal act of military surrender and war in Europe was officially over. The prime minister, Winston Churchill, declared the following day to be a bank holiday and thousands upon thousands of revellers flocked to London for two days of nonstop celebrations.
Among them was Bletchley Park codebreaker Charlotte “Betty” Webb. “Obviously, one was overjoyed that the war in Europe was over – and, to an extent, saddened thinking about the ones who didn’t come back,” says Webb, who was 22 at the time. “It was a mixture, but it was mainly joyous. At last, there was some channel of freedom.”
Webb, now 98, was serving in the Auxiliary Territorial Service and had spent four years at Bletchley Park, the Milton Keynes estate that became the centre of Allied codebreaking during the Second World War. She worked on encrypted radio messages intercepted by the British, contributing to the breaking of the German Enigma cipher.
On V-E Day, Webb and colleagues from her department took the train into Euston. She remembers walking through Trafalgar Square, which was teeming with people. “People had gathered in London from all over,” she recalls, “to such an extent that you didn’t have to make an effort to walk; you were just pushed along.”
The roads were closed to keep traffic out of the square and there was dancing in the streets. A giant conga line snaked around the statues and young daredevils attempted to climb Nelson’s Column. It was a humid day, and many jumped into the fountains to cool off. “We were all doing the same thing – we were singing and dancing and eating and drinking,” Webb recalls. “There was a feeling of release.”
All over the capital – and all over the country – people sported red, white and blue rosettes and hats and waved Union Jacks. Webb remembers she was in her ATS uniform, but there was a “massive mix of all sorts of people”.
Strangers hugged and kissed in the streets, and there was a feeling of unity. “Nobody necessarily knew the person next to them – we didn’t worry about that,” says Webb. “We were all in the same frame of mind. We had been fighting this war for such a long time that the end of it meant everyone was celebrating, in one way or another.”
The crowds gathered at Buckingham Palace to see the Royal family, who appeared on the balcony. The atmosphere was ebullient, even raucous. According to some accounts, people climbed lampposts and sang Land of Hope and Glory.
The celebrations didn’t die down as darkness fell, and by midnight, there were 50,000 people crowded on to the pavements of Piccadilly Circus. Webb recalls sleeping – eventually – at the YMCA near Euston, but others were not so fortunate. Hotels were full to capacity, and there were reports of Wrens and naval officers sleeping in shop doorways.
Webb, who earlier this month received the Légion d’Honneur, France’s highest honour, for her secret wartime work, says it was essential to mark V-E Day with such an enormous celebration. “That’s what we do in this country, isn’t it? You couldn’t ignore such a great occasion – it was one of the most major events in history, as I see it, and it would have been churlish not to join in the celebrations.”