Sixty years ago, Britain celebrated the Allied victory over Germany on
what became known as VE Day - Victory in Europe Day in
1945.
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Three remarkable accounts from the East of England build a picture of
the locations and lives in People's War: One Day in May.
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On VE Day, Babs Stebbard was living in North Walsham
in Norfolk, where she worked in the local food-canning factory packaging
food for the troops.
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Her husband Sidney, who she married in 1941, had been
missing in action in the Far East for more than four years.
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She remembers the celebrations of VE Day, including a street party in
the town square.
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But she also remembers that her own thoughts were thousands of miles
away with her missing husband.
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"We got down the town just to put the trestles up and seat the
children. Somebody was dancing, waltzing round the town clock, and I thought
- oh, the noise. I'm sorry, I can't. I want to be alone," says Babs.
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Seven months later, she finally discovered what had happened to her husband
when a policeman visited her home to break the news.
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Sidney was alive and recovering in a hospital in Calcutta. At first,
Babs did not recognise the gaunt figure that turned up in a taxi.
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"I
would have passed him in the street," she says. "I think he
weighed about five stone and he looked about 70 [years old].
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"I flung my arms around his neck and said: 'Don't you ever leave
me like that again', and he said: 'I won't - never!' And he never has."
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Today Babs and Sidney still live together happily at their home on the
outskirts of Norwich.
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When Elizabeth Marais left school in the early years
of the Second World War, her father had organised a clerical job for her
at the Norwich Union.
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She quickly grew bored and one day decided to leave. As she walked home
to break the news to her father, she saw a sign advertising jobs with
the fire brigade.
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"I went in and signed up so I could at least go home and say that
I've chucked the job in at the Norwich Union but at least I've got another
one," says Elizabeth.
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Like many other young women, the war opened up new opportunities for
Elizabeth. She drove vehicles during the devastating Baedaker air raids
on Norwich in 1942, and remembers vividly the scenes of destruction she
witnessed.
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"It just wasn't the city as we knew it. It was just devastation.
There were people crying, people injured, and first aid people going round
trying to help.
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"It was something that's very difficult to explain to somebody who
hasn't been there."
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The war also brought Elizabeth into contact with the American GIs who
flooded into the region. She remembers the excitement of the dances, but
also the mixed emotions of the airmen taking part.
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"The shattering thing was that in the middle of dances you'd sometimes
have some of the flyers arriving back from a mission and you'd hear them
say, 'Old Charlie bought it tonight'.
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"It was a mixture of tragedy and joy: very strange," she adds.
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Looking back at her experiences 60 years later, Elizabeth sees the war
as a time when women proved that they were capable of tackling a much
wider range of jobs than they had previously.
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"I think the war was the start of women's liberation really, because
we proved that we could do things that men could do, and we were never
going to go back and be just housewives sitting at home doing the knitting.
I think most of us felt that we were men's equal if not better,"
says Elizabeth.
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Eberhard Wendler was just 17 when he was called up to
fight in the German army.
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He fought the Allies during the Normandy D-Day landings, before being
captured by American troops and taken to England, where he became a prisoner
of war (POW) until his release in 1947.
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Eventually he was placed at High Garrett (POW) camp near Braintree in
Essex.
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"We were all homesick. As soon as we were captured, we thought about
our home. Many a night someone would hum a little song and everybody would
weep about home. It was very depressing," says Eberhard.
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Like most other German POWs, Eberhard was expected to work as a labourer
on local farms. But on VE day he and his fellow prisoners were given a
holiday.
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"We were really pleased it was over. We were glad we didn't have
to go to work, but we were worried what was going to happen next,"
he explains.
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Even after the end of the war, Eberhard would have to wait a further
two years before he was released from the camp at High Garrett. During
that time he continued to work on local farms, helping make up for a shortage
of domestic labour.
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He was finally released on 26 September 1947, by which time his home
town in East Germany was under Soviet control.
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Alarmed by the stories he'd heard about life there, he decided to stay
in England.
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"After we saw what was done at the concentration camps,
I was ashamed to be German and I felt in my heart I never wanted to go
back.
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"I thought that if that's what my own people did, I didn't want
to have anything to do with them."
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Eberhard settled within a few miles of High Garrett and in 1963 became
a British citizen when he married a local girl, Kathleen.
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Today they are still happily married, and live just a couple of miles
from the site of the POW camp where he spent three years of his life.
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Notes to Editors
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bbc.co.uk/ww2 is the biggest-ever archive of personal accounts of
war; the site already contains 14,000 personal stories, and hopes to attract
a total of 80,000.
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This ambitious interactive project will become a lasting legacy and resource
to the nation.
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