• Virtual VE Day 75

    8 May 2020

Dot’s West Norfolk VE Day memories

Dave Taylor, lovingly known as Dot, is one of the treasured volunteers at Stories of Lynn Museum and has been a wealth of information to us as we have looked back at Lynn at the end of the war as he was born in 1940. Despite being very young at the time of the VE Day celebrations, he has memories of the events and has shared those with us, remarking on the similarities of the current COVID-19 events.

We invite you to read on and drop in on the conversation Rachael had with him about what he could recall:

  • Dave ‘Dot’ Taylor & Rachael Williams

  • Dot & Rachael alongside the Poppy bloom

  • Dot imparting knowledge to younger generations

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Rachael

So, Dot, you were only young when the war came to the end, but I guess you would have had a sense of a change in mood in May 1945?

Dot

It is not surprising that I can remember that people suddenly seemed more carefree and happier. It must have lifted a great burden off their shoulders in the form of stress and the unknown. There was a different atmosphere and bustle about the town.

Rachael

Your parents were key people in your lives who would have helped you to cope with the stresses of living through the war. Do you have any recollection of ways they helped you to get used to the end of the war?

Dot

My father took me to the Tower Gardens at the end of the war. He showed me this strange object which he said was a massive searchlight and kept saying, ‘look at the size of that large bulb in the middle’. Dad was quite frustrated when I couldn’t recognise what he was trying to show me! I could remember the light that it gave because, much earlier in the war, my father had taken me out in the backyard to show me the searchlights trying to pick up German bombers.

Rachael

So, as a young child, the experience of a street party would have been very exciting, what do you remember of that?

Dot

I was amongst the children from Waterloo Street who were given a celebration street party where trestle tables were placed down an alley way from our street leading to the rear of the houses on St John’s Terrace. The tables were covered in bed sheets and, although I can’t remember the detail, there was probably jelly and a variety of sandwiches containing fish paste, egg (possibly from dried egg) and some sort of chocolate spread. I knew that it was a special occasion but, as a 5-year-old, did not understand the true significance of the occasion.

Rachael

Were the street parties mainly for the children?

Dot

We all enjoyed the street party, young and old alike, but there was also an area celebration dance for grown-ups in the Drill Hall (now a community hall) in Wellesley Street. I can remember wandering along and peeping in the door, listening to the music. It was the first time I had seen a man wearing a kilt – one of the Portland street residents was a Scot.

Rachael

Did you do any celebrations with your school?

Dot

I can’t remember any celebrations at my school, St James Infants, but I’m pretty sure that there would have been. I know there were some ‘Thank you’ parties put on.

Rachael

The contrast from wartime to the start of peacetime, must have been dramatic?

Dot

As a young boy at that time, I probably was not aware, thank goodness, but now, looking back, it’s difficult to consider that only the month before, concentration camps like Bergen Belsen had been liberated.  Thousands of people must have been starting to wander the countryside trying to find their way back to their much-changed homelands.

Rachael

The thought of people coming home must have created a buzz; but what about those who were here in East Anglia: the evacuees and the servicemen?

Dot

Oh yes, the excitement of the 50,000 American airmen who were stationed in Norfolk with the possibility of an early return to the USA- they must have charged the atmosphere with anticipation and helped with the VE Day celebrations!

Norfolk had changed a great deal. Lincolnshire was known as “Bomber County” but between 1942 to 1943, 37 airfields were built in Norfolk. It’s also interesting to note that tons and tons of bricks and rubble from the ruins from the blitz in London were transported by trains to Norfolk to build those airfields.

Rachael

We are going through a challenging time at the moment across the world. Do you consider there is any similarity between WW2 and the impact of this pandemic?

Dot

They are very different circumstances of course, but there is the small similarity between the current Coronavirus shutdown and the wartime restrictions.

People are living in fear of their nearest and dearest catching this killer virus just like wartime families were in fear of being bombed or near relatives being killed in action.

Recently, grocery shelves have been temporarily bare but there has always been enough to eat. In wartime, even rationed food was scarce and supplies unreliable. Of course, families could look forward to the end of rationing which we now know was well-delayed.

Some mothers accompanied their children as evacuees to houses in small villages that had no amenities like electricity. There was the constant fear of invasion and many had no knowledge of where their husbands were fighting and whether they would ever return. The relief at the end of the war cannot be fully understood today.

Rachael

And the evacuees, I understand we had one Young People who is now quite famous, sheltering in the relative safety of our county borders?

Dot

Of the many evacuees brought to Norfolk was a Maurice Micklewhite who is better known as Sir Michael Caine. He attended the primary school at North Runcton until 1944 when he passed his ’11-plus’ examination. He was told by London County Council that he should attend the nearest evacuated grammar school which was Hackney Downs in King’s Lynn. Because of the bombing of KES Lynn, where he should have been educated, most lessons took place at the Technical College which was then in Hospital Walk in Lynn. The numbers of Hackney Down students were increased to 140 pupils following the V1 and V2 rocket attacks on London. Maurice Micklewhite spent the academic year 1944-1945 at the Technical College where it is thought he was taught by the local King’s Lynn artist, Walter Dexter.

Rachael

Was Maurice here in Lynn at the end of the war?

Dot

Every summer since 1940, Hackney Downs School had held their annual sports day on the KES sports fields. It was recorded that on 22nd May 1945 Maurice Micklewhite won the 100yards in a time of 13.9 seconds. Not bad for a boy from London who arrived in Norfolk with rickets!

Rachael

You mentioned that there were some thank you parties put on, who were they for?

Dot

The evacuee pupils did not return to London immediately and on 13th July 1945 there were two special farewells: The first was organised by the boys of St James Senior School in their hall, with entertainment, to thank some of the families where they had been billeted. The second, in the evening there was a special dinner, led by the mayor and local dignitaries, as a farewell gathering to all the Hackney Downs School.

Rachael

Dot, thank you for sharing your memories with us. I guess, with relief, you would not have thought as a 5-year-old boy sitting at the street party table that you would be asked to recall what it was like 75 years later! I know you have been writing your life story during this lockdown period and perhaps these memories will be just a slice of the events you have experienced… I look forward to reading the rest!