Local New Forest celebrity, Esther Rantzen, was the special guest at a VE Day street party held in the grounds of the National Motor Museum during its annual Trucks & Troops event on the 29th – 31st May.
Fittingly, for the 65th anniversary of VE Day, 65 children attended the party, many dressed in the clothes of the period. The tables were decorated with Union Jacks and the food echoed the fare that children of 1945 would have eaten; a selection of jam and spam sandwiches, tubs of jelly and a variety of sponge cakes.
Esther said that she couldn’t totally recall VE Day as she was then only five years old but she did remember knowing it was a very important day and how happy her family were.
She said: “My grandmother walked around our garden holding a battery-operated radio on which someone said the war in Europe was over.” She did remember donning a gas mask, and sitting under the family dining table – which they planned to use as a shelter in an air-raid.
After the party Esther presented all the children with commemorative mugs.
Another guest at the three-day event was Viscount Montgomery of Alamein, son of the famous WWll Field Marshal, Bernard Montgomery. He was welcomed by members of the Military Vehicle Trust, the event organisers, and driven around the show in the 1939 Rolls Royce staff car his father used during the 1944-45 North West Europe Campaign.
Later, in the Beaulieu Abbey Cloisters, he paid his respects and laid a wreath at the memorial to members of the Special Operations Executive (SOE), the special agents trained on the Beaulieu Estate during WWll before being parachuted into occupied Europe to work with the Resistance.
    Esther Rantzen Joins VE Day Celebration Party
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