Liss Parish Council chairman, Keith Budden, spoke to villagers about his father's VE Day experience during a moving speech at Newman Collard. His father, George, was a soldier in the Alps at the time, but there was some confusion over whether the war was actually over..
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00:00My father George was part of the 8th Army and probably like most people who went through the war,
00:07very rarely spoke to me about the war or what he'd seen or what he'd experienced.
00:13I did remember asking one day about BE Day.
00:17I said, where were you dad when BE Day happened and what did it mean to you?
00:24He said, we were just crossing into Austria from Italy.
00:31He said, we heard on the radio that the peace had been declared.
00:44But it was confusing because we were with some Yugoslav groups who of course got all their information from the Russians.
00:53And the Russians didn't declare the end of the BE Day until tomorrow.
00:58So he said, they didn't actually believe us that the war had finished.
01:03So at that point, I actually became most scared that I had been in all the last 6 years.
01:10Because I thought, if they don't know the war was finished, what if we come across a group of German soldiers
01:19and they don't know the war was finished either?
01:22So I think it just makes me realize that although there was lots of celebration here and rightly so,
01:27for a lot of the troops it was still a dangerous time and I think it's important to remember that.
01:33or something.
01:34Do you think it's difficult to remember?
01:35It's difficult to remember this time.
01:36Well, I think we just keep forwarding this time for the war.
01:38I think you probably have all the weight of the war.
01:39But I think we need to be the first time.
01:40So I didn't even know that when we come across a row,
01:41there's no shame for that, but the two of you came across the border.
01:43Maybe the two of you came across the border.
01:45Do you think about that?
01:46Maybe the other two of you came across the wall.
01:48Duned by here, I see the end of the up due to another day.
01:51I think I'm doing so.
01:52I see the end of theneny.
01:53I think this is a very careful thing.
01:58And I think we're doing so much.