V-E Day: There Was Such a Feeling of Joy

Six bleak years of agony and hope, then one bright day of dancing in the streets

May 8, 1945--V-E day--was a day for which millions of people had fought and worked and prayed and died. Yet, ironically, it was a day on which little of substance actually happened. There were speeches, cheers and parades, but the German surrender had been signed early on May 7, and almost all the fighting had ended well before that. "We play softball every afternoon," a member of the U.S. 667th Field Artillery Battalion, at a German village near the Czech border, wrote in his diary. "I've had a shower, two movies and a U.S.O. show." Wrote one of his buddies: "V-E...

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