Sheffield Ex-Service Groups commemorate VE Day with solitary wreath during lockdown on 75th Anniversary

The nation will pay remembrance with a two-minute silence at 11am to commemorate all those who lost their lives so much during the Second World War.

Everyone is also asked to raise their glass or cup of tea as part of The Nation’s Toast at 3pm in gratitude and honour of those who fought, and died for their country.

It was an emotional sight to see the solitary figure laying a wreath at the Cenotaph in Barkers Pool, while the city centre, which would usually be awash with people at 8pm, resembled a ghost town.

Chair of the Sheffield and District Joint Council of Ex-Service Associations, Pat Davey was stood in front of the war memorial when I arrived, looking at the wreath she was about to lay in memory of Nazi Germany’s unconditional surrender to to the Allies of World War Two on May 8, 1945.

She has risked her own health and the chance of being stopped by the police, by leaving her house in Owlthorpe and breaking lockdown restrictions to make the journey into the centre of town and pay her respects to the sacrifice men and women made during the war.

The 81-year-old has an overactive thyroid caused by an autoimmune disease – she is considered at high risk of contracting the coronavirus due to her age and pre-exisiting health conditions.

Pat has not left the house since lockdown was announced by the Prime Minister on March 23 – not even to go to the shops – until now.

While keeping a safe two metre distance between us, the Chair explained why it was so important for her to break lockdown in order to mark the 75th anniversary of when victory was formally declared in Europe.

"I felt we had to just make that effort to remember the people who never came back and that is civilians and armed forces a like”, Pat said.

"To me it's very important that we do make some recognition of what happened and the kind of country that we are now and the kind of people.

"I wouldn't normally risk breaking any rules or regulations but I do feel that it is incumbent on us just to put that wreath there.

"I would normally have done it tomorrow but I think there's less chance of people being around this evening then there will be at 11 o'clock in the morning so that's why I've chosen tonight to do it.”

Sheffield was blitzed twice during World War Two causing 691 lives to be lost and 1,200 people badly injured.

"You know the moor now - if you started at the bottom now, when I was a kid, and on your left hand side as you walked up, all that you would see would be rubble, all those shops had been bombed out, that was the first two nights of the blitz”, Pat told me.

"The city hall, they had a dance on - they locked the doors, they saved hundreds of lives by locking those doors.

"I can't remember it happening but it was horrendous and what people suffered was equally horrendous.”

The 81-year-old who was born six months before war started in 1939, shared with me how ‘peace came as a shock’ to her – when the news was announced that the Nazis had surrendered, 75 years ago.

"I think the main thing about children born before the war, to us, war was normal - we didn't know any different”, she said.

"Peace actually came as quite a shock.

“I was actually staying with my godmother and I can remember being woken up in the middle of the night when uncle Billy came home from work.

"He worked in the steel works and aunt Ethel saying to him 'what are you doing home Billy, it's the middle of the night?’

"He replied saying 'the war is over' - that sticks in my mind.”

I had chills as Pat told me memories she had of how her family celebrated the historic war victory, while she was a young child living in Shiregreen.

"We went to a big bonfire in somebody's garden, we burnt Hitler and we had fireworks.

"It was unbelievable and I went to a street party a few days afterwards.

"People were dancing in the streets and hugging and kissing each other it was fantastic.”

As we stood near the empty cenotaph, the ex-service representative explained how a special 75th VE Day service had been cancelled due to the coronavirus.

On the spot where the bugler would have played the last post, surrounded by former service people paying their respects, Pat laid the wreath with tears in her eyes.

She stood there alone, as the city’s single representative to pay respects to the hundreds who died during the war.

“It is so real to people who went through it, but it will be with thanksgiving for the people that did put up with it.

"All the young people nowadays, the people born after the war, what they owe to their parents and their grandparents because no one expected to win the war, apart from ourselves.

"We never gave up hope, and we did win and a damn good job we did.”