Nurses dressed in 1940s uniforms, wards decked out in bunting, themed activity packs for our patients, and artwork and poetry displays from local schoolchildren are just some of the ways we’ll be celebrating VE Day.

Thursday 8 May is the 80^th anniversary of Victory in Europe Day, which celebrated the end of World War Two, and we’ll be holding a week of celebrations from Monday 5 May.

Ahead of the celebrations, we are sharing the recollections of some of those who were there – George, Olive and John – who are relatives of our staff members.

George Edney, 86

George (above) was six on VE Day in 1945 and has lovely memories of a street party where he lived in Bethnal Green to mark the end of the war.

The father-of-three said:

We had a brilliant party. I remember there being a great atmosphere with cream sodas, lemonade and cake – we’d never had treats like it. We knew the war was over and everyone was happy and laughing and cheering. There was bunting from window to window and people made cakes and brought their chairs and tables into the street.

While he has happy memories of the VE Day celebrations, George also remembers the traumas he and other endured the during the war.

He added:

For children, we were so young we didn’t realise what we’d gone through. We lived near the docks which was one of the targets and was bombed nearly every night. My dad got blown off the scaffolding he was working on during a raid and nearly died of fright, and a bomb landed at the end of our street.

I was lucky enough to survive but we saw the aftermath. I feel sorry for the poor souls who lost their lives, lots of genuine, honest people were killed and it still hurts. I was frightened out of my life when I went to school. We used to have to carry gas masks around our necks and I hated it when we had to put them on, I felt like I couldn’t breathe.

George also remembers how rationing drove him and his friends to pinch fruit and veg from Spitalfields Market, using wire they made into forks to stick into what they wanted. While he got a ‘good hiding’ from his mum for stealing when he got home, she still cooked his ill-gotten gains for dinner!

George said:

The war happened and it’s worth telling our stories. Once those like me are gone, these stories will die. They should be passed down to future generations.

Above is George when he was young.

Olive Norburn, 91

Olive (pictured above with great granddaughter Phoebe) was 11 on VE Day and remembers catching a train to London with her family to join the crowds surrounding Buckingham Palace and catch a glimpse of the king and queen waving from the balcony.

A few days later, there was a street party where she lived in Harold Wood (pictured below).

She said:

It was good to mix with other children in the road without worrying, and the adults had done the best they could. We still had several years of rationing still to live through so the food wasn’t really anything special.

Almost everything was rationed. I can remember the long queues at the shops for very little, but there was a thriving black market, so we did have the occasional treat.

At one point during the war Olive and her family had to move in with her grandparents when bomb damage meant their home wasn’t safe to live in.

She added:

The doodlebug bombs were the most feared as we could hear them coming, but when they went silent it meant they were about to drop and could land anywhere.

One night a bomb landed close to our house and blew out all the doors and window. We were unhurt as we’d slept in the bomb shelter in our garden. We couldn’t live in the house for quite a while after that.

Olive, who has two children, three grandchildren and four greatgrandchildren, was evacuated for around a year during the war, aged just six years old. She went to Burnley, Lancashire, where she lived with the Padden family.

She added:

Me and my siblings, my older brother Ron and younger twin brother and sister, Derrick and Sheila, were all evacuated. The twins were kept together but Ron and I went to separate families.

My father hadn’t been called to serve due to health problems, including malaria that he caught while serving in India during World War One. As he was a barber, he spent the war cutting the hair of soldiers in barracks in the area.

John Brocklebank, 88

John (above), who was eight on VE Day, also had a street party where he lived to mark the occasion. In this case, some of his neighbours built a huge bonfire to burn an effigy of Hitler.

He said:

We had sandwiches to eat, whatever could be scraped together. Some Dutch sailors who were lodging nearby joined the celebrations.

It was a chaotic day, but everyone was happy.

Along with his older brother George (now 90), John gave their mother a fright when they burst into the restaurant where she worked following a bombing to declare either their grandmother or the neighbour looking after them had been killed.

Luckily, both women survived but had been knocked out by the blast, which hit a bus garage near their home.

John, who has two children and two grandchildren, said:

It was hit twice within six week – just after all the windows had been replaced, they were blown out again.

Me and my brother used to go out all day to Epping Forest and one day we heard a doodlebug coming towards us and the engine cut out, we ran away and it landed about 100 yards from us. Luckily it hit a swampy area and I think that took the force of the blast. It frightened the life out of us. Then my mum heard a bomb had hit Epping Forest and rushed home to check on us as she knew we’d be there.

We’d gone into the bomb shelter at home and said we wouldn’t come out until the war was over. But then we did come out for dinner!

John’s school was also closed when damaged by a nearby blast, with the pupils having to go to a girls’ school nearby.

His family also took in a dog, Rex (pictured below with a young John), the only one to survive a bombing of the home where his family lived.

John added:

He was the best dog, so faithful. He used to come out with me a George every day.

In the years following the war, John spent time in hospital amongst a number of injured soldiers. The soldiers were being treated for disfiguring injuries by a plastic surgeon, who was also seeing John, who helped to keep the soldiers entertained, to remove a childhood birthmark.