Update from the Community Council including VE Day Plans
Dear Residents,
This Friday we commemorate VE Day. Celebrations were planned, parades, street parties and acts of remembrance. Those plans have changed because our lives have changed.
75 Years Ago
We have residents in the community today who lived through VE Day, 75 years ago.
Community Councillors David Walker, Roy Wakelam and Pat Ransome at the Millennium clock, freshly decorated for the 75th anniversary of VE Day
There were far fewer houses and many more shops! Penyffordd and Penymynydd were different places and there were 5 pubs to choose from. St John’s Church and school is little changed, apart from the crossroads becoming a roundabout. The building now used by the Youth Club was was Penyffordd school, with steam trains crossing the road outside it.
Those who lived through the war will tell you that it would be another 9 years after VE Day before food rationing ended. The lack of jobs and economic hardship meant that the toll from WW2 was not just in the tragic loss of life, but it affected the lives of everyone.
Before WW2, Broughton was a small village and the airfield waterlogged farmland. During WW2 it became a mighty factory producing Wellington and Lancaster bombers, while a squadron of Spitfires defended the skies from across the airfield. So many aircraft used the airfield, and thundered over this village, that an overflow runway was built in the Duke of Westminster’s grounds. Many of the bombers manufactured at Broughton were ferried to their squadrons by women pilots.
Once the Second World War was over, after the hardship, there was an economic boom (as well as a baby boom).
This week, as we reflect on what happened 75 years ago, at the end of a Worldwide conflict that cost millions of lives and saw some of the worst atrocities, we thank that generation for their sacrifice and perhaps appreciate it a little better.
In WW2 bombs from German bombers heading home after attacking Liverpool did drop in the village.
And of course, men from the community went off to war and some sadly never returned:
James Bradshaw
Robert Davies
Thomas Edwards
James Ellis
Raymond Hulley
Harold Johnson
Joseph Price
Joseph E. Reynolds
John C. Willis
George Williams
William Wright
Charles Wright
From 1939 to 1945, 383,700 UK military personnel lost their lives and a further 67,300 UK civilians.
TODAY
The danger our generation faces is very different to that 75 years ago, but it does help us to understand better the scale of their sacrifice and the relief they must have felt when it was over. It is clear that the spirit of people during WW2 is very much in evidence today.
Covid-19 has been in this country for a matter of weeks and has claimed over 25,000 lives. Every loss of life is so sad. Remember, the vast majority of people who catch COVID-19 recover.
Broughton has changed so much since the war with the expansion of Airbus and the manufacturing there is more important to our community than ever. We worry about the impact of changes, as we worry about the impact of changes to the livelihoods of many of us.
When the lockdown eases, we can start to think about how we can support each other in our new way of life.
As a community we have come together brilliantly, and we are looking out for each other in many different ways. Neighbours are shopping for each other, groups are making NHS scrubs for our local hospitals, people are donating books, DVDs for isolated people in the village and snacks for the NHS. Quietly many people are helping each other.
Your Community Council is doing what it can to support.
The noticeboards are being updated with current advice, the phone box at the top of the Vounog has been taken over as a noticeboard too. Puzzle books and crossword books have been distributed to the elderly, newspapers are being bought, books and DVDs have been collected and are in quarantine at the Legion before being distributed by volunteers.
We have donated specialist fabric to make scrubs for the NHS and so far we have raised over £1,300 for our local NHS workers.
Thank you to everyone who has donated, volunteered or is working so hard for the community.
The Community Council has been meeting regularly ‘unofficially’ online over the last few weeks. This month we will hold our first official meeting (online) since March. We will publish the agenda in advance and invite public questions. We will share the minutes and actions from the meeting straight afterwards.
On Friday, as a Community, we encourage you to come out of your houses and celebrate the end of the war and think about the relief felt by those who had endured 6 years of lockdown. Councillors have put up some bunting knitted by WI and other volunteers in the village. If you have flags or bunting, you may want to join in and dress your own house or garden.
If you prefer not to think about war and 75 years ago, hang out some bunting and celebrate the efforts of our armed forces and our front-line NHS and key-workers helping to get through our own conflict today. Whatever you choose to think, celebrate or remember let’s do it as a village together, but we must continue our vigilance and we must do it within our own gardens with our own household members to continue to stay safe.
Timings:
11.00am Two Minute’s Silence (following by a live stream by the Royal British Legion nationally, including recollections from the war)
2.45pm BBC1 – The Announcement of Victory
4.00 – 6.00pm Celebrate in your Garden
9.00pm Queen will address the nation, the same time her father did exactly 75 years beforefollowed by a National sing-a-long of We’ll Meet Again
Thank you to everyone volunteering, helping, making, working and supporting!
On behalf of Penyffordd Community Council
Alan Wight
Chair