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VICTORY DAY

Revd Michael Turner, Vicar of the Close (Monday 6th June 2005)

I am writing this on a real anniversary, May 8, sixty years to the day when Victory in Europe was declared. Because of the pressure of the General Election many of the main celebrations seem to have been postponed to the now ‘official’ Victory day, July 10, being halfway between VE Day and VJ Day. Although how you can make a nothing day, when nothing happened, as something newly spectacular is a mystery to me.

I remember May 8 of course, and so perhaps do many of you. No, I was not returning from the front line but merely a boy of ten for whom the war was distant, despite a few bombing episodes, and non threatening. We even used to wave at German aeroplanes, which any boy over five could instantly recognise, as they and the bombs they dropped were surprisingly remote.

VE Day to us meant a street party with jelly - that was a prerequisite - and strange richer-tasting cakes as a mood of wild optimism and extravagance swept over the country. And my first banana. I didn’t know what to do with it, though unkind people made, in my opinion, several unhelpful suggestions. There was the present of a flag to wave, so we all waved it without really quite knowing why. There are certain other vaguer memories of that momentous day in which I remember grown-ups doing silly things, words like ‘swinging’ and ‘lamp posts’ come to mind.

As time passes so fashions change. Jelly today is an uncommon sight, rarely gracing our party tables. Bananas are plentiful, hiding huge man-eating, or at least man-biting spiders now. Flags - well, politically-correct city halls dare not raise a flag let alone wave it. Times have certainly changed. But war has not. War rumbles on. VE Day was not the end of the war to end all wars, that had been in 1919, and since May 8, 1945 there has only been, I believe, one twenty-four hour period when British soldiers have not been engaged in active service somewhere. Aliens from other worlds must look down on us and say “How they must hate one another” for that is what we seem to do.

But we surely know better, don’t we? We know the real commandment, the real sign of fellowship that matters. “See how those Christians love one another” was the mark of the early Church. War was talked about a great deal in the general election which we have just experienced (in case you hadn’t noticed) but it was the wrong war. We should of course have been talking about the war against poverty, disease, neglect, which is the breeding ground for angers and resentment. That is why we need reminders about the ends of wars and the beginning of peace.

So please do not fiddle with dates and tidy them up for convenience sake. Don’t tamper with history. Learn from it. Perhaps we can use every opportunity to get back to that first principle of love and really make it work. And a banana jelly with a flag on it would make my day!

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