Covid#22 - VE Day

Today, for the first time in weeks, disease and death wasn’t the headline news; VE Day was a much-needed distraction from coronavirus.  Scenes of busy hospital wards and locked-down care-homes were replaced with those of street parties: bunting strung across house-fronts, Union Flags flying proudly, people coming together to dance in their streets – albeit sensibly spaced two metres apart.

Interviews with workers on today’s frontline were replaced with interviews with those who had served on another or on the home-front and remember Churchill’s announcement of the German surrender, the crowds outside Buckingham Palace, the cakes at their street parties seventy-five years ago.  The sad tears of those bereaved by Covid19 were briefly replaced with the happier memories of victorious fathers returning to their families after months of fighting or imprisonment abroad.  Grief and despair at the rising number of deaths today was replaced with remembrance of the far greater number who gave their lives in a far greater fight and gratitude for the fortitude and sacrifices of that wartime generation.

Many didn’t celebrate today.  Doctors, nurses and carers on today’s frontline were too busy caring for the sick and dying, engaged in today’s fight against the virus and to save lives.  There were those worried for elderly and vulnerable friends and relatives, or anxious for someone sick or in hospital.  Some were alone and fearful for themselves.  And, of course, there were those in mourning. 

Equally, not everyone celebrated seventy-five years ago.  Then too, many felt terrible loss; some were too haunted by the devastation of the blitz, the battlefields of Europe and the appalling suffering of the occupied across the continent; others were exhausted by years of terror, fear, fighting and loss; and all knew that victory in Europe was less a full-stop than a comma – the war in the east remained to be fought and then came the struggle for a lasting peace.  As Churchill said, celebration would only be an interlude, ‘a brief moment of rejoicing’.

Just for today though, perhaps we could be forgiven our distraction from those realities.

Comparison of our modern-day emergency with that my grandparents’ generation endured and the battles they fought isn’t right.  The tyranny and the horrors they confronted and the sacrifices they made in total war far exceed our own challenges and remain unimaginable to us.  What has become more imaginable though is the sadness of separation they too experienced, the solidarity and strength they found in their communities and their eventual joy in coming back together with family and friends.  The words of Vera Lynn’s ‘We’ll meet again’ have taken on greater poignancy.

There was great hope today in the way neighbours came together in defiance of the virus.  There’s great hope too in the coming together of the world’s scientific community to learn more about coronavirus and find treatments or a vaccine.  We’re fighting a very different enemy today but still there is a great sense that we’re all in this together. 

For all of us, VE Day wasn’t the celebration it was supposed to be.  There was no sharing of our homes and gardens to fancy-dress wearing family and friends.  There wasn’t the same sharing of food there would have been without fear of infection.  We didn’t gather around the barbecue, debating whether or not the burgers were properly cooked and toasting marshmallows.  There weren’t any drunken dances with neighbours.  No-one got to enjoy my Eton mess!  It wasn’t just the lockdown that subdued our celebrations though; how can you really party when over thirty-thousand people have died in the past few weeks and you know thousands more will die?  No-one was really in the mood for a proper knees-up.

Some people talk of parties when all this over, on the other side of the lockdown, once coronavirus is finally beaten, whenever that will be.  There will be gratitude, relief and joy, just as there was seventy-five years ago: gratitude for sacrifices made and the incredible efforts of workers on our frontline, relief that it’s all over and joy at seeing friends and family once more.  Celebration may be hard though.

626 people died in the UK today, bringing the total to 31,241.