VE Day 8th of May 1945

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Today is the 77th Anniversary of Victory in Europe Day.

For Australians, the war was not over until Emperor Hirohito’s announcement of surrender on 15 August 1945, which brought peace to the Pacific region. This year, 2022 marks the 77th anniversary of this event (although the official surrender ceremony did not take place until 2 September 1945). Australians had been at war since 3 September 1939 so the surrender marked the end of nearly six years of conflict with all the loss, stress and privations that marked those years.

Despite this there was much celebration across Australia, the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, and all other allied nations on this day 77 years ago.

A drone carrying a Ukrainian national flag flies past Independence Monument to mark Unity Day, the day Ukraine was invaded by Russia and the day gazetted as a national holiday by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Oleksandrovych Zelenskyy.

May we soon feel that euphoria displayed in these photographs when victory over oppression in Ukraine is achieved.

……….but we COULD do far more!

8 thoughts on “VE Day 8th of May 1945”

  1. Great post. Got me thinking… did any Australian ground units fight in Europe at all?

    How is the Ukrainian War being reported by the Australian media?

    Cheers,

    Pete.

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  2. Thanks Pete. By far the majority (2,500) of Australians who fought in Europe in WW2 were in the RAF and the RAAF. About 500 Australian navy personnel fought in RAN ships and specialist army advisers supported the Normandy landings. The Second AIF fought in Sicily and North Africa but were returned to defend Australia in New Guinea following Japan’s entry int the war.
    The Ukrainian war has taken a back seat to our Federal elections in the news at the moment so we have to find information on line.

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  3. A top post matey and really grand set of photos, we have just had a big Family do come mothers day and strangely enough one of my brothers law proposed a toast for VE day! that floored me as its not some thing that he is normally intune with! Whats interesting to me is how few infantry were involved in Europe, I had two uncles in Nth Africa, one like you said was sent back to NG the other was captured and sent the rest of the war in a prisoner of war camp in germany.

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  5. A great post. One of my relations who had gone to Australia in 1936 actually returned to the UK to join up at the start of the war. To my knowledge there are still some of us down there.

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