I also clearly recall a Sunday in September 1939 when I was seven years old and my brother, Evan, was two. The festivities ended with a gigantic fireworks display over Central London.Īs I was 14-years-old in 1946 my memories of that amazing day are still vivid – and just as amazing is the fact that all four members of the Jones family survived the war unscathed. (Women’s Land Army).Ībove us, an aerial parade featured a fly-past of 300 fighter planes and bombers, and the gliders that carried paratroopers in the D-Day invasion of Europe that hastened the end of Nazism.Īfter sunset, London’s main buildings were lit up by floodlights and crowds thronged the banks of the Thames to see King George VI and his family sail past in the royal barge. Leading the parade were the famous military commanders we had read about in the newspapers and seen in newsreels, including Generals Montgomery, Eisenhower and Smuts, all listed in the official programme I have among my souvenirs.īehind them came more than 500 vehicles of the Allied armed forces, tanks, Bren-gun carriers and other self-propelled weaponry uniformed marching columns of British, Commonwealth, United States and foreign men and women of the navy, army and air forces Indians and Gurkhas, men and women from South Africa, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, and the female forces of the W.R.E.Ns (Navy), W.A.A.Fs (Air Force), W.A.A.Cs (Army) and the W.L.A. People were standing 10-deep by the time the parade began so children were moved to the front and saw everything.
We had arrived by train from Gillingham the day before and stayed overnight with an aunt in Putney, rising early next morning to travel on the Underground to a favoured spot in Parliament Square opposite Westminster Abbey and Big Ben. On 8th June 75 years ago thousands of people lined London’s streets to see the triumphant Victory Parade celebrating the end of World War 2, and I was among them with my parents and younger brother.
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