VE Day: How Personal First-Hand Accounts Help Keep Everyday Narratives Of Wartime Britain Alive

(MENAFN- The Conversation) From street parties to flypasts, the myriad events of VE Day – which this year commemorates the 80th anniversary of victory in Europe – take place against the backdrop of grand wartime narratives. These include accounts of military strategy, major battles and political decisions made by global leaders. Central to the day are the few remaining second world war veterans and the memory of those who lost their lives in the conflict between 1939 and 1945.

While military and political history may dominate the retelling of VE Day, the research of my colleagues at Napier and myself has focused on a wartime commentary written by a young woman called Lorna Lloyd from Malvern, Worcestershire, between 1939 and 1941.

Through our study we found that bringing the voices of ordinary people from the second world war directly into the present can forge strong emotional connections to the past, giving people a real appreciation of what it was like to live through the war in Britain. This material also prompts consideration of parallels between past and current hostilities.

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Fearing a German invasion in May 1940, 26-year-old Lloyd wrote in her diary:“I shall bury this diary so deep that one day, in a saner world, someone may find it and know that the last legions of civilisation meant not dominion but good.”

Whether or not today's world is saner, our research with 12 interviewees familiar with two digitised versions of Lloyd's wartime diary revealed that excerpts had a stronger emotional impact when packaged as audio in a podcast series than they did presented online as text and images.

Lorna Lloyd. Author provided

Using news reports from the time including broadcast excerpts from the BBC, Lloyd's words composed at her middle-class home in the Midlands highlight that war is a very human experience that affects everyone.

Her commentary offers insight into the devastating reach of the conflict on those far from the frontlines, with reflections that demonstrate the psychological toll of war and its impact on everyday life.

They also shed light on the roots of post-war social transformation, from the formation of the National Health Service to the cautious outlook of the so-called“silent generation” who grew up amid rationing and uncertainty. In a time when peace can no longer be taken for granted, these personal perspectives reinforce the importance of diplomacy, and the need to avoid conflict in the future.

Although we anticipated that our participants would find the experience particularly affecting since they knew Lloyd was played in the podcast episodes by her 25-year-old great-great niece, an unexpected finding was that the emotional reaction was greater when the audience members recognised parallels between Lloyd's reports of the early months of the war and the current war in Ukraine.

They were struck by the echoes of Lloyd's commentary on 1940s wartime Europe in present-day Ukraine. One interviewee said:“It's so much harder [to listen]... because we are in a similar situation ... If you changed the words slightly, it could [be] contemporary ... If we made Germany Russia, and made Finland Ukraine ... We are dealing with [accommodating displaced people] today.”

This finding shows that examining history in this accessible way can lead to identifying parallels with the present. An advantage that we have today – and which was denied to Lorna Lloyd and her contemporaries – is that we have an example from history to warn us about the dangers of the current political climate in Europe.

Britannia, a watercolour by diarist Lorna Lloyd. Hazel Hall, Author provided (no reuse)

The political and economic pressures at the time in Weimar Germany paved the way for the rise of the Nazi party. And now, with the rise of the right wing in Europe and across the world once more, it is more important than ever to learn from the past.

As so few living memories of the second world war remain today, VE Day gives us a chance to consider how we keep such“hidden” histories alive. Our research shows that digital storytelling such as podcasts give fresh resonance to archive material in an uncertain world. And it makes clear the enduring value of encouraging interaction with historical records to make sense of today's wider social and political turbulence.

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