LONDON, U.K. -- I remember this day, May 8, because it’s my brother’s birthday. Happy Birthday Bob.
I’m self-isolating in Britain. He’s self-isolating in Canada. What a sorry bond we share. Bond of brothers.
As I was growing up and learning stuff, I discovered that May 8 was also the day victory was declared in Europe. My birthday had no such distinction.
May 8, 1945. VE Day. Bob was born exactly a year later.
It was his connection, and thus mine, to a great and momentous event. We were village kids playing war games. Victory was still a fresh memory.
Our father never signed up to fight. We were always told he had to stay home and look after his sick parents. Both had suffered debilitating strokes. Somebody had to support the family.
I hadn’t really thought about it much, until I was confronted in the school playground with a taunt of cowardice. The exact words are lost; the sting of the accusation is not.
Coward. My father? I never asked, but from that moment on, I always wondered. And felt terrible about questioning the family story.
That’s my childhood memory, as Europe marked 75 years of liberation -- a day when we were meant to relive the euphoria of a great continental victory.
It is nostalgia and pride that drive these anniversaries, the music, the parades; home fires burning. The call to remembrance. It is not something you can do from a social distance.
Instead, we woke up in London, subdued and sad at losing so many of that wartime generation.
It was announced that nine British veterans have died of COVID-19 at an army retirement home in London. It became a day of lament more than celebration.
There was no royal appearance from the balcony at Buckingham Palace, as there was 75 years ago. The Queen consoled the nation with a televised address recorded in seclusion.
It was broadcast at the symbolic hour of 9 p.m., the same time her father, George VI, spoke on VE Day -- he, to a people wildly overcome with jubilation; she, to a nation of empty streets and people confined to their homes and afraid of dying.
(Photo: On May 8, 1945, a vast crowd assembles in front of Buckingham Palace to cheer the Royal Family as they come out on the balcony, centre, minutes after the official announcement of Germany's unconditional surrender in the Second World War. Credit: AP Photo/Leslie Priest)
It is perhaps just as significant that another hugely loved and admired British woman also addressed her nation. Last night on the BBC, I watched old soldiers weeping as they sang along to the wartime songs of Dame Vera Lynn. They knew all the words.
She’s 103, living under lockdown with her daughter.
“Try to find the joy that remains,” she wrote, “even during these challenging times.”
Vera Lynn found the joy. She created it. She sang of it. She channelled it from the White Cliffs of Dover to the beaches of Normandy -- when joy was so desperately needed.
“And always,” she told Britain, on this somewhat somber anniversary, “keep smiling through.”
