While people back home danced in the streets, held parties and drunk London dry, across the theatres of war the news was greeted in many different ways

TUESDAY, May 8, 1945, was Victory in Europe (VE) Day, and it marked the formal end of Hitler’s war. With it came the end of six years of misery, suffering, courage and endurance across the world.

Individuals reacted in very different ways to the end of the nightmare. Some celebrated by partying, others spent the day in quiet reflection, and there were those too busy carrying out tasks to do either. Ultimately nothing would be quite the same again.

It was clear, since at least the beginning of 1945, that the end of the Second World War was in sight following a series of capitulations.

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The German forces in Italy surrendered on May 2. On the following day a high-ranking German delegation, including a senior admiral and a senior general, appeared at the headquarters of Field Marshal Sir Bernard Montgomery, located near Lubeck.

Typically, Montgomery barked: “Who are these men? What do they want?” They had come to surrender the German forces in Northern Germany, Denmark and the Netherlands.

The final document of unconditional surrender was signed at General Dwight Eisenhower’s headquarters in Reims on May 7.

Prime Minister Winston Churchill and King George VI wanted Monday May 7 to be VE Day, but in the event, bowing to American wishes, victory was celebrated on May 8.

The USSR waited an extra day before beginning their formal celebrations.

The fighting, killing and dying went on up to the very last minute, and even continued into the immediate period of supposed peace.

A German U-boat sank two merchant ships on May 7 off the Scottish coast, and some Germans continued to fight against the Red Army for several days after VE Day.

A common reaction to the news of peace among soldiers in Europe was ‘I’ve survived’. Stuart Hills, a British officer with an armoured regiment, finished the war deep in Germany. On hearing the news he felt immediate exhilaration and marked the occasion with some ‘liberated’ champagne. But then ‘reaction set in’ as he thought of his friends who had been killed, and he no longer felt like celebrating.

A Scottish battalion let off some flares when the news came through. Later, rum was issued, and one platoon held a sing-song.

Otherwise, VE Day passed without much incident. For one unit, still in close proximity to German forces, they refused to believe the war was over, and it was business as usual.

The 8th Hussars (part of 7th Armoured Division), better known as The Desert Rats, celebrated VE Day in Northern Germany with a church parade followed by rum punch drunk beside bonfires on which swastikas were ceremonially burned.

Elsewhere there were more riotous celebrations, with men going AWOL and even some alcohol-fuelled fatalities, but these tended to occur further back from the front line.

In general terms, the British army remained well-disciplined.

The fighting might have been over but surrounded by a near-starving civilian population eking a living in the ruins of Germany’s towns and cities, everyone could see that there was still much to do. Moreover, the thought of the Far East was in the back of many minds.

For the Western Allies, of course, the conflict in Europe was only one half of the world war. At that stage, the atomic bomb was a secret known to a very few, and the end of the war with Japan seemed a very long way off.

Many soldiers, sailors and airmen in the European theatre anticipated being sent to fight the Japanese in the Far East. The men of the British Liberation Army serving in Germany interpreted the initials BLA as meaning Burma Looms Ahead.

Not surprisingly, for some troops in action in Burma, or sailors of the British Pacific Fleet fighting alongside the US Navy, the news of victory in Europe seemed somehow unreal.

As if to rub home the fact that there was still a war to be fought, the aircraft carrier HMS Victorious was hit by a Japanese kamikaze suicide plane on the day after VE Day.

For Far Eastern troops out of the line, there was an opportunity to celebrate in various ways. Some got hold of alcohol, while the Women’s Auxiliary Service (Burma), attached to 26th Indian Division, supplied mugs of tea to a race-meeting held on a beach.

A surprising number of soldiers who served in the Burma do not even mention VE Day in their memoirs and diaries.

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One group in the Far East who did hear about the news from Europe were prisoners of war from Britain and other parts of the Empire still held in terrible conditions in Changi Prison, Singapore, who picked up Churchill’s victory broadcast on clandestine radios.

In Australia, the war with Japan was quite literally nearer to home, and the Sydney Morning Herald posed the question, ‘Since when has it been customary to celebrate victory halfway through a contest?’ Subsequent VE Days were often quiet affairs in Australian towns and cities. In New Zealand, victory was celebrated on May 9 in an orderly fashion – the government having made detailed plans months in advance – and the population quietly obeyed instructions.

This was in stark contrast to VE Day in the Canadian city of Halifax, where bars were unwisely closed, leading to the widespread looting of alcohol by servicemen, inevitably followed by riotous behaviour and the destruction of property.

Many sailors of the Royal Navy discovered the news of VE Day through their ships’ ‘sparks’ (radio operator) as they picked up BBC broadcasts. Many ships’ captains celebrated the occasion by ‘splicing the mainbrace’ – a euphemism for issuing a rum ration.

For some, this was a pleasant interlude in what was otherwise a normal working day. A force of British and Canadian ships spent VE Day sailing to Jersey and Guernsey, occupied since 1940.

Although in his victory broadcast Churchill had announced that, ‘our dear Channel Islands are also to be freed today’, it was unclear whether the defenders intended to fight or surrender.

In the event the liberation was achieved peacefully, with the Bailiff of Jersey leading the crowds in St Helier in a rendition of the National Anthem, which the Germans had banned for the duration of the war.