Tag: Christ Church Cyfarthfa

V.J. Day – a Contemporary Account

by Laura Bray (née Bevan)

Following on from the account of V.E. Day from Glyn Bevan’s diary which appeared on this blog in May (http://www.merthyr-history.com/?p=4691), to mark the 75th anniversary of V.J. Day, here is an account of the days leading up to V.J. Day and the day itself from Glyn’s diary.

13th August
We put up all our flags and streamers yesterday and have listened to every news today to hear the official announcement of the end of the war. None of us have much doubt about it although it is believed that the Japs in Burma may fight on whether Japan capitulates or not. Rumours all day about peace and premature celebrations all over the U.S., Canada and Australia. Stayed round the supper table talking for ages and then washed up. Continued talking in the drawing room until 01.00.

14th August
All up rather late. Decided to go to Tintern and Symonds Yat before dinner. Came on through the Forest of Dean (where a red squirrel crossed the road) to Monmouth, and then went on down the lovely Wye Valley to Tintern. Unfortunately it was shut but we walked all round the outside of it. A very lovely place and in very good repair. Came on through Chepstow, Caerphilly and Nelson. Celebrations all the way up, several bonfires and a few rockets, floodlighting and illuminating V’s etc. Rumours all day. We fully expected the official announcement on the 9.00 o’clock news. Now we are waiting for Attlee to broadcast at midnight. We are all expecting Japan to agree to our terms of course, and that means peace.

……….

PEACE

Attlee has just announced that Japan has accepted our surrender terms and that tomorrow and the next day will be celebrated as victory days throughout the country. A very matter of fact speech with none of the drama that old Churchill would have put into it. The whole Empire must be sorry that he couldn’t make the announcement. We toasted the new peace with whiskey and wine and cake. Rockets started exploding singly and there was a little shouting. From the bedroom window we could see about 15 bonfires – but none really large. Later on crowds in town sang and danced and prayed until 3.00 o’clock in the morning. Hooters went as well and engines in the station blew their whistles. Several church bells rang including ours (people thundered on the door of the Vicarage, woke the Vicar and pretty well told him to ring it) and there was a peal of bells from the Parish Church. Town filled rapidly and there were crowds there for hours.

15th August
Rain last night, and after a week of very dry weather and the air was cold and clean with smoke drifting up and the sound of church bells in the valley. Very calm and peaceful, fresh and sweet, like a Sunday morning. I read most of the morning and nearly all the afternoon. Listened to a description of the King driving down Whitehall to open Parliament and also went to town where the shops were open till about 10.30. Then came home to find they had all gone to a Thanksgiving Service in Cyfarthfa so we down town to see if there was anything doing. There seemed to be a lot of troops about (nearly all army) but things were fairly quiet. Plenty of flags and streamers. Came back via Thomastown and up the Tramroad in time to hear the King at 21.00. We all went down to the bonfire on the allotments after the news (for which we supplied most of the heavy logs). About 20 good bonfires in the valley and lots of rockets and fireworks but no bells tonight.

Residents of Tramroadside North celebrating V.J. Day

16th August
Spent the morning doing little odd jobs that I wanted to clear up before going away. Read after dinner till 15.00 when we decided to go down to Cardiff to see Terence Rattigan’s play “While the Sun Shines”. Play very good. Museum floodlit. A large crowd was dancing and singing in front of the Civic Centre. Bonfires all the way up the valley but not on the same scale as Coronation night.  Came through Pontypridd where they had coloured lights strung along both sides of the main streets for about a mile and a well made crown fixed over the bridge. Very poor fireworks, but it is amazing that people have any at all. Saw lots of street teas on the way down.

V.E. Day – a Contemporary Account

by Anna Morrell (née Bevan)

Glyn Bevan, my uncle, from Merthyr Tydfil, served as an officer in the Royal Navy during the Second World War, and was working at the Admiralty in London, aged just 24, when peace was declared. Here is his diary account of the V.E. Day celebrations in London. .

Glyn Bevan during the war

V.E. DAY

Violent thunderstorm, between 0100 and 0300. I was woken up by an extremely bright flash of lightning at the start. Heavy rain for a time. I believe there was a thunderstorm the night war was declared too. The streets were already filling with people as I cycled in to Admiralty. The end of the war has coincided with a big leave party from the B.L.A. (British Liberation Army) and also with the return of a large number of P.O.W.s, so besides the usual flags and banners many house have “Welcome home” and “Welcome home Pally” on them. About 75% of the houses and shops on the way in had at least one flag. All very like the Coronation in a way except that the whole thing has so much more meaning.

Am in Admiralty all day. Went out to lunch with J.L.S. and had to fight our way through perfectly enormous crowds in Trafalgar Square. Got held up by a procession on the way back and we were both streaming with perspiration, almost exhausted by the time we got back to the cool corridors of Admiralty.

Church bells were ringing all day. I locked up the office at 1500 to hear the PM – the first time it has been locked up since war started – and again at night to hear the King who spoke very well. Went out again for dinner – up to Piccadilly and Leicester Square where it was almost impossible to move. Planes were flying over dropping flares and the crowd was letting off explosives. Took Joan and another girl out into Whitehall at 2230 to see the lights. A lot of Whitehall was flood-lit, all Trafalgar Square, where it was a light as day with mobile searchlight batteries, and Parliament. The Jack on Parliament Tower was flood-lit too and looked grand and so was Big Ben. The show piece in Whitehall was the Ministry of Health which had flags of all the nations up besides being floodlit and bathed in searchlights. We went down just in time to see and hear Churchill speaking to a crowd of 60,000 from the balcony. The place was massed between Parliament Square until past the Cenotaph and the whole lot of us cheered and cheered at intervals through his speech until we were hoarse.

Winston Churchill greeting the crowds in Whitehall

Then went up to Trafalgar Square where they were letting off dozens of Very lights and explosives. The crowd was so immense that we simply had to drift with it, you couldn’t move independently. Eventually we got through Admiralty Arch as most people seemed to be going to the Palace. The Arch was lit by 40 searchlights and it was almost literally as bright as day. This was in addition to the usual floodlighting arc-lamps.  The National Gallery and St Martin’s were also floodlit and looked grand. Planes dropping flares over St James Park, and there was also a bonfire there. Exceedingly warm, muggy day. More thunder to come I should think.

V+1

Also a general holiday. Cycled back to Woodford and went straight to bed. Got up at 4 o’clock and had tea. It rained a little as I came in. Got to the National Gallery at 1800 but JG didn’t turn up till nearly 1900 owing to the crowds so I listened to the bells of St Martin’s peeling out and also playing hymns and watched the crowd dancing and singing in the Square.

When he arrived we went off to Piccadilly where we pitched into beer and sherry and got pleasantly tight. Then had dinner with more beer and whiskey and finished off with brandy. Then drifted down to the Ministry of Health where there was another enormous crowd and waited there from 2130 to 2245 when Churchill came out. Chanted “we want Winnie” at intervals and sang songs  – Roll out the Barrel, Daisy, There’ll Always be an England, Land of Hope and Glory, Keep the Home Fires Burning, Tipperary, Pack up your Troubles etc.

Got talking to a small boy and his young mother and several other people. Churchill came just after the floodlights went up and got a simply terrific reception. We yelled ourselves hoarse all through his speech, especially when he said “And let us not forget our great navy” and “God bless you all”.  And we yelled for about 5 minutes at the end. Then went through the Park to the Palace where there was another enormous crowd. Flares and firecrackers too. The King and Queen came out just after we got there.

Eventually got back to Trafalgar Square and I took J up on Admiralty Arch. We then joined in songs in the Square and eventually he jumped a lift to Liverpool St and I went into Admiralty canteen to get some tea. Came back via Whitehall, the Embankment, St Paul’s. After the West End the City was blacked out, there was barely a light showing in Stratford and Wanstead. Got to bed by 0200.

After the war, Glyn returned to Merthyr to run the family business, a manufacturers’ agents, with his brother Clive – my father. Also as a talented musician, he was the organist and choirmaster at Christ Church, Cyfarthfa, for nearly 25 years. He died after a long illness in 1994.

Christmas 1945

by Laura Bray

The following is an extract of a letter written by my grandmother, 72 years ago today, to her son who was still on service with the Navy. She regularly attended Christ Church, Cyfarthfa, which she talks about in the letter. The vicar in question was Rev Vivian Thomas who was at Cyfarthfa Church from 1937 until 1948.

Christ Church, Cyfarthfa

Merthyr Tydfil
23 December 1945

“Christmas is the day after tomorrow…..It is a happier Christmas in many ways than we have had for the last six years.  The cloud is lifted.  There is no fear. But for ease of living I suppose things are worse than they have been at all at there is no evidence that they will be any better for a very long time.  We shall be paying off our debt to America for generations.

…Vicar got up a carol service this Sunday evening like the one in King’s. Nine lessons by different members of the choir with a carol sung between each.  Two Choir boys read lessons and four of the choir men….

Vicar had a brainwave.  He would have two Christmas trees in church, decorated and lit.  He appealed to the congregation to give him decorations.  But there are none left…..when I went up yesterday to decorate the font he was down in the depths.  His enthusiasm was petering out.  The trees that came were too big. They had had no end of trouble to get them in place. There were no decorations. People wouldn’t lend any and none could be bought.  And he could see he had had the idea the wrong year.  He should have waited until things were normal again etc etc.

We found at home long stands of tinsel – tarnished but whole – and took them up.  I bought silver paper in town and drew a star on paper, a foot across.  We cut it out in stiff cardboard and stuck the silver paper on.  It made two grand stars.  We made two tiny holes and pushed wire through and they were at the very top of the tress and looked well.  In the dark, before the lights were put on, it looked as if it were a star hanging up in the sky.  Vicar had an electrician up who wired one tree for lights, and he put a floodlight to light up the tree.  Only one.  The other tree was against the pillar just beyond the font.  The electrician came to me (I was decorating the font) for cotton wool with which to decorate the tree.  It looks really well……

After the (Carol) service, the whole choir went to the hospital and gave a concert of carols.  They went to six wards….by the end of the tour even those members of the choir who didn’t attend many choir practises, began to know them.

The sideboard is beginning to assume a Christmassy aspect, cards everywhere and oranges and apples.  Think of it.  G told me some time ago that he would see I had oranges and apples for Christmas; though for their business this was going to be the leanest winter of the war.  It is too.  The powers that be purposely arranged that there should be an allocation the week before Christmas.  To keep up our morale, no doubt”

My grandmother next writes on 29 December, when she describes Christmas Day and Boxing Day , shared with family and friends.  The house had  “Usual decorations, a holly wreath tied with red ribbon over the fireplace, the long string of separate letters from the mantlepiece…mistletoe over the hall arch, holly behind every picture…yellow chrysanths in one table vase and holly in the other…best china and linen and a nice big fire ….. on both days your photograph in a silver frame was on the table for meals and there was talk of you all day long”.

It may have been the first Christmas of peace but in many ways it was also the last Christmas of war, when families were still apart, loved and missed.

How different is her description of 1945 from Christmases today.