Victory! is just the Beginning.
We note VE-Day as the end of the war. It's probably time to start remembering and celebrating it as the beginning. The most unlikely comeback in history. The beginning of the world in which we exist.
Eighty Years Ago This Week
Eighty years ago this week, Victory in Europe was declared.
May 8th, 1945 — the day the modern world began.
The world most of us grew up in flows directly from what happened that week. Even a year earlier, it wasn’t clear how it would all turn out. The pain, suffering, rationing, and ruin would linger for years. But May 8th marked the beginning—not of ease, but of effort. A moment when people across the free world took a breath, looked around, and began to rebuild.
Beauty for ashes is an old phrase from the Book of Isaiah, evoking the idea that out of ruin, something better—something even beautiful—can rise. It’s hard to think of a more fitting description for what followed VE Day. The cities were bombed out, families shattered, economies broken. Yet somehow, from those ashes came not just recovery but renewal: democratic institutions strengthened, peace held, and a vision for a better world took root. It wasn’t easy or immediate, but it was real. VE Day marks not just a victory in war—but the beginning of the long, courageous work of building beauty from devastation.
What followed was the greatest period of reconstruction and human flourishing in history. Not just bricks and roads, but the building of a vision: peace, prosperity, and possibility for a generation yet unborn—us.
Of course, much was lost in the process. Today, even history itself seems less remembered than reframed. Not forgotten, exactly, but often pushed aside to suit newer ideologies.
So this week, take a moment—not for the now meaninglessly controversial plaques, statues, or the faded names on roads and schools—but for the people who guilessly built and named them. The ones who ingenuously built the foundations again when the war was over. The ones who, after a generation of suffering, chose to begin again. To imagine better. To act in faith that the world could be remade.
And then they did it.
Billy Bragg shared this old letter written 80 years ago this week.
On the day that the Second World War in Europe ended, 8th May 1945, his mother-in-law Margaret Pountain was a 19-year-old trainee nurse at St George’s Hospital on Hyde Park Corner in London. That evening she wrote this letter to her parents in Chesterfield, Derbyshire, vividly describing her experiences on the streets of London during the VE Day celebrations.
Dearest Everybody,
I’m just writing tonight mainly because I’m thinking about you a lot and wondering what you are doing – whether you are celebrating (given that you have something to celebrate on) or whether you are having a quite respectable time and are in bed. At any rate, we have just been saying that we would give a lot to be with you, that is, our respective folks at home.
At the moment, the strains of God Save the King are floating through the ward window and the rockets are still going off in intervals. I wonder what VE night in the provinces is like, especially little Chesterfield? We have had a somewhat hectic time but even though we are tired to death it was wonderful.
First of all we met D’s sister and as we were in South Kensington, we went to her digs to hear Mr Churchill at 3pm. Then back to the hospital and dumped our coats (it was boiling hot) and went down to the Palace where there was a mass of humanity gathered around the gates and all over the Victoria Memorial, waving flags and yelling and singing and sweating for all they were worth.
We stood and yelled “We want the King” for about half an hour and just as we were beginning to despair they all came out on the balcony. The King was in naval uniform, the Queen in blue, Princess Elizabeth in uniform and Princess Margaret in blue. They all looked exactly like their photographs.
Somebody had got a fireman’s ladder and put it against the gates and a man climbed right up above the crowd and waved and the King waved back and we all shouted and sang For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow until they disappeared (it’s amazing what fervour can develop in a crowd – makes one realise what mass hysteria can do).
Then we walked through Green Park and up Piccadilly. Piccadilly! Up by the Circus you could barely move and everywhere we were showered with confetti – people waving flags and rattles and blowing horns. All the Services seem to be riding on the roofs of the cars.
Near the Circus, there was a huge crowd gathered round a taxi, where a soldier, sailor and an airman were leading the singing and shouting hip hip at intervals. We stood there for a while and then got through eventually and went to Trafalgar Square down Whitehall and reached Downing Street, where a crowd had gathered in the hope of seeing Winston. We were told however that he was in the Ministry of Health further down and might come out on the balcony. We accordingly went down there and I have never been in such a crowd in my life, I feel literally bruised from the squashing.
Eventually we almost got panicky and fought our way out – I wouldn’t have gone into that seething mass again for ten Prime Ministers and the Royal Family thrown in. There was no brawling or ill natured pushing – just a case of ten people where there was room for only one. Anyway, we got the Tube back to Georges and at last got a drink of lemonade – the cafes were of course impossible – and climbed out on the roof above Hyde Park Corner. By this time we were nearly dead and dropping at the prospect of coming in on duty tonight.
We got back to Wimbledon and could not get a bus. We started to walk – a taxi came and actually stopped! He took us to the nurses home, insisted on waiting while we threw on our uniforms and then took us down to the hospital and then wouldn’t take any fare at all. He said he was glad to do it for the profession! Tonight half the patients were up and we couldn’t get the ward settled. I had to do the suppers. It was even a decent meal for a change.
We decided to go out for half an hour in our supper break to see the fun. We went up to Wimbledon Common. There are bonfires and fireworks and fairy lights on the trees – lots of the houses are lit up and outside the pub, people were standing in the open air drinking what beer was left.
As soon as we were spotted somebody yelled “here – nurses! Can’t let them go dry. Find ‘em a drink” and before we could blink we were holding a pint of beer. Having downed it I felt considerably better and more able to cope, so we returned fortified! We also have permission from Sister to sit down on the sofa tonight so S. and I will take it in turns to sleep.
Of course I didn’t see all of it, and perhaps tonight is different, but I don’t think anyone could have objected to people’s behaviour today. I wonder what Chesterfield was like? I bet there was some maffiking going on! You know the war seemed very real here and today when the rockets were going off people still jumped and when they whined, like H.E.'s coming over, involuntarily they ducked. The bomb scarred buildings remind me forcibly of what it was like then - and in general one gets a kick out of being a Londoner, even one of twelve months standing.
THURSDAY
We got up at 4pm and went up to town, joining the crowds in Whitehall calling for Churchill. The mounted police had a job keeping us all back – I find myself pushing as hard as everyone else. Then blow me it was Winston himself, standing through the car roof driving down Whitehall. Everyone just surged forward and I was pushed right to the front! I had a wonderful view - I was only about six feet from him!
Then an RAF bloke climbed up a lamppost, sat on the top piece and directed the cheering from there. A sailor climbed another post and started counter cheering. Then a very red faced policeman climbed up and pulled their trouser legs until they came down ( the men, not the trousers).
Everywhere was floodlit and the Houses of Parliament looked superb against the night sky. And Oh – the Palace! As you know by day it looks quite dingy but by floodlight! I’m told the Princesses came out through a back gate with some Guards officers and joined in the cheering. We arrived back in Wimbledon and walked from the station singing 'For He's A Jolly Good Fellow' and 'Bless 'Em All'. On the hill there was a bonfire outside a block of flats and people dancing in the street with fairy lights.
Yesterday I'll never forget as long as I live.
Lots of love, Margaret
Margaret Pountain died at the age of 82 in 2008. Some of her ashes were scattered on the roof of former St. Georges Hospital building, now occupied by the Lanesborough Hotel.
What is it in these words that makes me sob uncontrollably? Is it the hope? Is it that we know what happens next? Is it the guileless sense of being in that moment as if it were inevitable even in the face of all other possible worlds?
Maybe it's that it was all done for us — a rising generation yet to be born.