SYDNEY WILLIAMS ON V-E DAY MAY 8, 1945
On this day, when we remember the victory that brought seventy-five years of peace to Europe, we should never forget the men and women who fought to preserve civilization.
While V-E Day is celebrated on May 8, the “Act of Military Surrender” was signed in Reims by General Affred Jodl, on behalf of Nazi Germany and accepted by General Dwight D. Eisenhower, Supreme Commander of Allied Forces, at 2:41AM May 7, 1945. When guns finally ceased, Europe had been at war for five years and eight months. Americans had been fighting for three years and five months. An estimated 75 million people lost their lives during those years, including 405,000 Americans.
I was four years old, living at my maternal grandparents’ home in Madison, Connecticut, with my mother, two sisters and a brother. My father, with the 10th Mountain Division, was in Roverto, just west and north of Italy’s Lake Garda’s. In his History of the 87th Mountain Infantry, Captain George Earle wrote: “After the memory of the seared browns of the Apennines and the recent dust of battle, the May colors of the foothills of the Alps seemed unbelievably fresh and vivid.” The war in Italy had ended five days earlier.
While some equate our experience with COVID-19 today as our generation’s trial, it is not the same. Certainly, healthcare workers, who daily face the possibility of infection, knowingly confront peril. But those of us who “shelter-at-home” have little in common with foot soldiers in foxholes, airmen in combat, submariners being depth-charged, or marines storming beaches. We wear masks and socially distance.
On May 7, 1945, the war in Europe was over, but the Japanese were still dug in on Okinawa. The next day, President Harry Truman spoke: “This is a solemn but glorious hour.” British Prime minister Winston Churchill also spoke: “We must now devote all our strength and resources to the completion of our task both at home and abroad…” An invasion of Japan was planned for the fall, and the 10th Mountain Division was to participate. On May 21, in words that captured his somber mood, my father wrote my mother: “I don’t believe there’s any use thinking about getting home for a long, long time.” Fortunately, his concern was never realized. The bomb ended the War, and he arrived home on V-J Day.
None of us chooses a time to be born. It was the fate of the generation born in the first two and a half decades of the 20th Century that they were fated to serve in the Second World War. All lives face obstacles, some worse than others, most of which are beyond one’s control. We must each play the cards we are dealt. J.R.R. Tolkien’s young Frodo Baggins, after his final adventures in The Fellowship of the Ring, says to the wizard: Gandalf: “I wish it need not have happened in my time.” Gandalf replies: “So do I. So do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.” The World War II generation, in their time, faced incredible challenges, yet they did their duty. They went without complaints to a fate they knew not.
On this day, when we remember the victory that brought seventy-five years of peace to Europe, we should never forget the men and women who fought to preserve civilization.
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