Category: Factual & Arts TV
Date: 13.10.2005
Printable version
BBC TWO,
Tuesday 18 October 2005,
7.00-7.30pm
Sixty years ago Britain celebrated the Allied victory over Germany on what became known as VE Day - Victory in Europe Day.
Three remarkable accounts build a picture of the locations and lives in People's War: One Day in May.
On VE Day Babs Stebbard was living in North Walsham in Norfolk, where she worked in the local food canning factory.
Her husband Sidney, who she married in 1941, had been missing in action in the Far East for more than four years.
She remembers the celebrations of VE Day, including a street party in the town square.
But she also remembers that her own thoughts were thousands of miles away with her missing husband.
"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.
Seven months later she finally discovered what had happened to her husband. Today Babs and Sidney still live together happily at their home on the outskirts of Norwich.
When Elizabeth Marais left school in the early years of the Second World War, her father had organised a clerical job for her.
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.
"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.
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.
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.
"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.
Eberhard Wendler was just 17 when he was called up to fight in the German army.
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.
Eventually he was placed at High Garrett (POW) camp near Braintree in Essex.
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.
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.
He was finally released on 26 September 1947, by which time his home town in East Germany was under Soviet control.
Alarmed by the stories he'd heard about life there, he decided to stay in England.
"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. I thought if that's what my own people did I didn't want to have anything to do with them."
Eberhard settled within a few miles of High Garrett and in 1963 became a British citizen when he married a local girl, Kathleen.
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.
Notes to Editors
bbc.co.uk/ww2 is the biggest ever archive of personal accounts of war.
