The Royal British Legion (RBL) is proud to announce the charity will support the attendance of 30 Second World War veterans to Buckingham Palace for a Tea Party with His Majesty The King, Patron of the RBL, and Members of the Royal Family.
Delighted veterans who served their country during the War will be the guests of honour on a momentous day of events to mark the start of the nation’s VE Day 80th anniversary celebrations, including the military parade and flypast, followed by a Tea Party at Buckingham Palace. The veterans will be joined by another 20 Second World War generation guests, including evacuees.
British and Commonwealth Armed Forces veterans from the Royal Navy, the British Army and the Royal Air Force will be in attendance, as well as WRENs, Special Operations Executives, D-Day veterans, Desert Rats, those who were still in active conflict in other parts of the world after VE Day, and those who contributed to the war effort on the home front, accompanied by their families and carers.
The Tea Party will include 10 female veterans who served as codebreakers, drivers and mechanics. Joyce Wilding, 100, who was in Churchill’s Secret Army, and Ruth Bourne, 98, a Wren at Bletchley Park where Nazi messages were intercepted, who were both outside Buckingham Palace in huge crowds 80 years ago celebrating VE Day in 1945 will be among them.
Some of the Second World War veterans attending the Palace Tea Party include:
Norman Trickett, 98, who joined the Army aged 18, and ended up being taken prisoner of war. He fought in D-Day with the infantry landing on Gold beach before fighting through Northern France, Belgium and Holland. He served at Arnhem, helping Airborne Troops beat back German counter attacks, then fought through Germany and the Netherlands where he was captured by Germans at the beginning of May 1945 leading an advance scouting patrol and ended the war as a prisoner in Bremerhaven. He stayed in the Army and served with the Royal Engineers in Italy, Africa and Palestine until 1948.
Arthur Oborne, 99, who served in the Desert Rats, took part in the D-Day landings and took a bullet through the lung as troops advanced across France and had to be airlifted to hospital. In 1945 he was at his final posting, at the 44th Prisoner of War Camp at Goathurst near Bridgwater, where he was put in charge of rations and transport for the camps throughout Somerset holding Nazi prisoners.
Tom Stonehouse, 99, who fought in D-Day, remembers ‘losing lots of Essex Regiment friends in the Battle of Caen’. He met his brother marching in the opposite direction into Arnhem and encountered 11 German soldiers during a patrol in the Netherlands. Soon after VE Day, Tom was told that he was being sent out to Asia to continue fighting, so celebrations for VE Day were muted. Tom’s wife’s birthday is on VE Day so they always celebrate the birthday and their war memories together.
Joyce Wilding, 100, enlisted in the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry (FANY) aged 18, and worked in the Special Operations Executive (SOE), known as Churchill’s Secret Army. Joyce transported forged documents and helped agents behind enemy lines. VE Day was filled with joy and celebration, she recalls: “We went to Piccadilly where there was a stream of people singing and dancing; we joined a crocodile and did the Palais Glide down Piccadilly; there were soldiers up lampposts, it was extraordinary. We were outside Buckingham Palace and you could hardly move there were so many people cheering and singing.”
Joy Trew, 98, who served in the WAAF (Women’s Auxiliary Air Force), remembers being fascinated with aviation ever since seeing German aeroplanes dropping bombs over her school playground. She joined the Women’s Junior Air Corps, and after watching her sisters choosing to work in the factories after being called up, Joy knew she didn’t want that. She remembers teenage boys in the air corps eager to fly and join up, and thought ‘I can do this’, and so enlisted in the WAAF aged 17, and her father wasn’t pleased so didn’t sign her papers until the night before she had to return them.
Gilbert Clarke, 98, was in Jamaica in 1943 when news came that volunteers were wanted for the RAF, so he lied about his age and within days, he was kitted out, receiving basic training and being sent on a troop-carrying ship to Britain via the United States. The journey to Britain was marked by torpedo attacks from German U-Boats which hit a number of ships travelling alongside Gilbert’s. He finally arrived in Britain in March 1944.
Olga Hopkins, 99, was a wireless mechanic in the WAAF, and vividly recalls the ecstatic moment when VE Day was called. She recounts “lying in my bed in our Nissen Hut at around midnight, listening to the American Forces Network radio station, when suddenly the programme was interrupted by a Tannoy announcement saying, ‘The war is over. The war is over. It's been signed’. We all jumped out of bed and put our battledress on over our pyjamas. We went to the sergeant’s mess where there was a party going on, so we joined in. I remember me and some other girls singing the Cole Porter song ‘Don’t fence me in’ and I had a whale of a time.”
Betty Hollingberry, 102, left her bank job in 1942 to volunteer with the WRNS. She was one of six sent to Eastcote to join HMS Pembroke V, but wasn’t told much at the time. Their job was to operate the Bombe machines, designed to help break German Enigma codes. Each Bombe rapidly tested possible settings of the Enigma machines, narrowing down the possibilities for codebreakers at Bletchley Park. It was highly secret, repetitive, and mentally demanding work requiring great concentration and later, the work grew more intense as the Germans deployed new weapons like Doodlebugs and V-planes.
Frederick Pickering, 100, who joined the Royal Navy in 1943 and served on minesweepers, was on board ship on VE Day when the Tannoy announced there was Victory in Europe. That day they all celebrated with two tots of rum and later went on to do a Victory March in Leghorn. After the war he continued his work minesweeping in the mediterranean and wasn’t demobbed until 1947.
Bernard Morgan, 101, is a Royal British Legion ambassador and D-Day veteran who still has the original telex he received to say the war had ended. He volunteered on his 18th birthday in 1942 and served in the RAF until 1947. Bernard was a codebreaker during the war, and the equipment he used was so sensitive that he couldn’t risk it being captured by the enemy. He landed on Gold beach at 6.30pm on D-Day becoming the youngest RAF sergeant to land in Normandy. Two days before VE Day, he received a telex to say ‘German war now over, surrender effective sometime tomorrow”, but kept it secret.
Alan Kennett, 100, who returned to Normandy with the Royal British Legion for last year’s D-Day 80, is ‘honoured’ to be the procession torch bearer. Alan was in the RAF with the Mustang Squadron and after the D-Day landings, was in Celle near Belsen on VE Day. He remembers being in the station cinema on the evening of May 4th, when the doors burst open and a soldier drove in, in a jeep. Initially annoyed by the disruption, the cinema soon erupted with joy as Battle of Britain pilot Johnnie Johnson shouted, “the war is over”. A big party soon followed, filled with lots of drinking and celebration.
Henry Ducker, 104, who was called up to join the RAF in 1940 aged 19, will be the oldest among the veterans the Royal British Legion is taking to Buckingham Palace for tea with The King and Queen. He worked as a flight mechanic and vividly recalls being in a convoy of ships in the Med and coming under enemy aircraft attack. He served in Italy – where he spent VE Day – and worked on Hurricanes which saw action in Monte Cassino.
"This is such a significant and joyous moment for the country and it is an honour for the Royal British Legion, as the nation’s champion of Remembrance, to be taking Second World War veterans to Buckingham Palace today. To think that in 1945, after six years of devastating war, they were rejoicing that VE Day had finally come - and here they are now, 80 years later, proudly meeting our Patron The King and Queen on this very special day. We owe them, and the entire Second World War generation, our eternal thanks and gratitude. We’re immensely proud to be putting veterans at the heart of these national celebrations and commemorations as this really will be one of our last opportunities as a nation to pay tribute to those veterans still with us today. ”
Mark Atkinson, Director General of the Royal British Legion
Some of the veterans in London today will also be with the Royal British Legion on VE Day, at the Tea Party and Service of Remembrance at the National Memorial Arboretum in Staffordshire, which will include a Spitfire and Hurricane flypast.
Veterans are attending the national commemorations after the Royal British Legion issued an invitation in January for the Second World War generation and their families to register to join us for VE and VJ 80th anniversary events.
