Category: East Midlands TV
Date: 25.04.2005
Printable version
People's War - Pauline, Sheila and Joan, Â鶹ԼÅÄ ONE (East Midlands),
Thursday 5 May,
7.00-7.30pm
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Sixty years ago Britain celebrated the Allied victory over Germany on what became known as VE Day - Victory in Europe Day.
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Embroiled in scenes of national jubilation at the end of the Second World War are three women who, in sharing their stories of wartime Leicestershire, reveal their very different reasons to remember.
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Part of the Â鶹ԼÅÄ's V45 series of programmes looking back at the war, People's War tells the women's remarkable stories as they revisit the Leicestershire locations where they spent their war.
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Auxillary Territorial Service (ATS) girl Joan Nichols takes three generations of her family back to the old top-secret listening station at Beaumanor Hall.
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Joan's story ends on the eve of VE Day and the narrative is taken up by Sheila Knight who takes her husband Sidney back to the site of the VE Day party in Wigston where they met 60 years ago.
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Sheila recalls how her life was irrevocably changed by the whirlwind events of those celebratory 24 hours.
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Finally, a poignant story is told by Pauline Stone whose VE Day was tinged with sadness as her father was still fighting in Burma.
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Her story has a tragic ending and the events have overshadowed the rest of her life.
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These three stories bring the sadness and exuberance of those closing days of conflict to life through personal testimony, stills and evocative locations.
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Notes to Editors
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bbc.co.uk/ww2 is the biggest ever archive of personal accounts of war; the site already contains 14,000 personal stories, and hopes to attract a total of 80,000.
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This ambitious interactive project will become a lasting legacy and resource to the nation.
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The stories
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While it may have escaped the terrible air raids that the nation's industrial heartlands endured, the East Midlands certainly saw its fair share of wartime action and suffered under the privations of rationing and shortages.
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Its contribution too was no less important as the area offered supplies, arms and men to Britain's war effort.
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As the region gave up its men, more responsibilities fell to its women.
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In this Eagle Media Productions film for the Â鶹ԼÅÄ, Pauline, Sheila and Joan share their experiences as they take us through the final months of conflict to VE Day and beyond.
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Personal archives illustrate their stories while the people, places and buildings that they revisit bring alive their war.
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The film begins during the war. ATS girl and radio intercept operator Joan Nichols returns to Beaumanor, the top secret listening station that supplied Bletchley Park with its raw material.
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Sworn to secrecy for so many years - "my father died, never knowing what I did during the war" - Joan can finally share her memories with her family.
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Four generations return to the house in the Leicestershire countryside as Joan revisits the sites where she spent her war.
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Her daughters, granddaughters and great granddaughters see the places - little changed in 60 years - where she worked, slept and socialised and come to understand the secret importance of Beaumanor's work.
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Joan met and married an RAF officer stationed locally and in 1945 became pregnant.
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Her first thought as she received news of Victory in Europe over the wires was that her child would be born in peacetime.
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For Sheila Knight VE Day was when her adult life began.
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Growing up in Wigston, at the time a small rural community on the edge of Leicester, she had witnessed the bombing of the city.
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As a young woman she had felt the restrictions of wartime necessity and was all too glad to see them end.
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Thrilled by the news that the war in Europe was over she joined neighbours and strangers alike in a street party at the centre of the village and danced to the band of the Air Training Corp.
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Sheila's life was to change on that night. Her chief dancing partner, a young man whom she only vaguely knew, was to become her husband.
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Sheila and Sidney Knight relive their VE Day party, revisit the locations that brought them together and retrace the walk home that cemented their relationship.
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For Pauline Stone's family the war didn't end with VE Day.
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While they joined in the celebrations their day was tinged with sadness as her father, Leonard Kemp, was still overseas.
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Pauline had not seen her father since he had left for war in 1941 and was never to see him again.
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Pauline's story carries us beyond VE Day to 11 November. Word had been received that finally her father was to return.
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A neighbour who had been serving with Leonard in Tripoli brought word that he would be home later that evening.
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A special meal was prepared and the neighbours decked the house in red, white and blue to give Leonard the VE Day he had been denied.
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The night came and went and at lunchtime on the 12th a telegram was received.
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Pauline's mother eagerly opened it thinking it was from her husband - it was from the War Office. Leonard's plane had crashed on takeoff.
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Pauline vividly recalls the events of those days and tells of how she had felt an eerie sadness on the 11th, which was later so tragically explained.
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Unlike his comrades who died in battle, Leonard Kemp's contribution to the war has not been memorialised in the village where he lived.
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Sixty years after his death the film follows Pauline's attempts to get the recognition her father deserved.
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With the help of local historian Pamela Ward, will they achieve her goal?
