As we approach Victory in Europe (VE) Day we’ve been looking at how the day itself was celebrated locally back in 1945. Paul Gayton, one of our Volunteers, found a few examples of how the people of Richmond did their bit to mark the day. The Yorkshire Post of 8th May 1945 recorded goings on at the Castle.
After Winston Churchill’s peace announcement, the church bells were rung.
A Mrs Curran bedecked her house on the Green, an unknown resident on Darlington Road did the same, and a Victory cake was baked and ceremonially cut by a Mr. McCoy.
A Union flag sent from the children of Richmond Tasmania in 1910 was flown from Trinity tower.
The Mayor and the Corporation sent greetings to King Haakon of Norway, to Richmond, Tasmania and Richmond, Virginia.
The band of the Green Howards played in the Friary Gardens where people danced. Dancing and singing also took place in the grounds of the castle.
Huge crowds flocked up Hurgill Road to High Moor where a beacon was set alight, and the
National Anthem was sung. As 
Scandalously, a man was detained by police for setting off thunder flashes.
The merrymaking continued until one o’clock in the morning.
But it wasn’t the end for everyone.
On 8th May 1945 the country celebrated Victory in Europe. Many mourned for loved ones lost, fewer counted their blessings that their family had come through the war relatively unscathed. But, for some, the war was not over. The allies were still fighting in the Far East and Prisoners of War had yet to be repatriated.
One such PoW was 4395944 Private Simon Allen Mudd from Richmond. Simon enlisted into his local regiment, the Green Howards and was posted to the 5th Battalion, a unit drawn mainly from the towns of the west coast of Yorkshire. On 23rd April 1941 Simon and the rest of the 5th Battalion left Liverpool bound for the middle east. The Mediterranean was regarded as too dangerous, so the convoy of troopships sailed down the west coast of Africa, stopping at Freetown in Sierre Leone, then on to further stops at Capetown and Durban in South Africa, before sailing up the Red Sea, through the Suez Canal and, on 13th August into Port Said.
From north Africa Simon was transported across the Med to Italy and his first PoW camp, designated as Prigione di Guerra ‘Prisoner of War’ (PG) 66 by the Italians, the camp was at Capua outside Naples. Simon was then moved to PG 73 at Fossoli di Carpi near Modena and, when Italy sought an Armistice from the Allies, the Germans transferred Allied PoWs to camps in either Germany or Austria, for Simon it was the latter, specifically the camp at Markt Pongau near Salzburg, officially designated as Stalag XVIIIC.
The contemporary archive is patchy, and we next find Simon at Marseille, boarding the Steam Ship Arundel Castle in late January 1945. The camp at Markt Pongau was liberated by American forces in May 1945, so it may have been that Simon was wounded when captured and, still suffering, he was selected by the Red Cross for an early repatriation.
For Simon’s parents at Whitcliffe Place in Richmond (number 3 according to the 1939 Register, or No. 9 according to his Red Cross Card) the impending safe arrival of their son, however scarred, must have been eagerly anticipated. Sadly, being so close to home, having survived the heat of battle and nearly 3 years in captivity, Simon was destined not to see home again. The passenger manifest from the Arundel Castle shows that Simon died onboard ship of a Coronary occlusion on 2nd February 1945. To make matters worse, with no means of storing his remains he was buried at sea, thus his family had no grave to visit. Simon is commemorated on the Alamein Memorial, 4000 miles from home, though he is also commemorated on the War Memorial in Friary Gardens in Richmond. One soldier and one family for whom VE day did not signify anything like a return to normal.
As we celebrate VE day, we will think of those who sacrificed everything for us, and we will remember them.