On May 8 I'm going over to Birch Hill up the road and pay a visit to 89 year old Ace Parker. We'll chat a bit about his experiences as a gunner on B17's and maybe we'll likely have a cigar together. Before I leave, I'll be sure to thank Ace for all that he did during WW2. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

Back almost 61 years ago on May 7, l945, Germany surrendered. On May 8, V-E day (for Victory in Europe) was declared. Winston Churchill broadcast to the British Empire and to the entire world that "The evil doers are now prostrate before us. Our gratitude to our splendid allies goes forth from all our hearts in this island and throughout the British Empire". The news of the German surrender spread like wildfire, and the world erupted in celebrations, dancing, singing, parties in the streets, toasts and just plain wildness. Europe went crazy with joy. Massive celebrations took place, notably in London, where over a million people celebrated. Times Square and Piccadilly Circus in London were mob scenes. President Harry Truman dedicated the victory to the memory of his predecessor, Franklin D. Roosevelt, because FDR had been so committed to ending the war. Roosevelt had died less than a month earlier. While the celebrations in the US were not as wild as those 90 days later when the Japanese surrendered, they were still pretty uninhibited. However, the War in the Pacific had been more personal, its outcome had not yet been resolved and fear still lingered.

On April 25, the German Army had been decimated as American and Soviet forces met at the Elbe River. Five days later, Adolf Hitler committed suicide in his bunker in Berlin. His successor, Admiral Karl Doenitz, sent General Alfred Jodl to the Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Forces detachment in Rheims to seek terms for an end to the war. At 2:41 a.m. On May 7, general Jodl signed the unconditional surrender of German forces on all fronts, which was to take effect on May 8 at 11:01 p.m. After six years of unmitigated horror and countless millions of lives lost, the war in Europe was over.

But eight months earlier, on September 5, 1944, beloved Stars & Stripes columnist Ernie Pyle, who had been such an inspirational and moving force with his reports from the front, wrote his final column in Europe. What made him so special was that he wrote about people rather than war. He returned to the U.S. For health reasons, but shortly afterward, went back to the Pacific where a Japanese sniper killed him on the island of Shima on April 18 at the age of 44. He had just been awarded the Pulitzer Prize for journalism. In his pocket was the draft of a column he intended to publish in anticipation of the war's end in Europe. It reads as follows: (from Ernie's War: The Best of Ernie Pyle's World War II Dispatches, edited by David Nichols, PP. 418-19).

"On Victory in Europe

"And so it is over. The catastrophe on one side of the world has run its course. The day that it had so long seemed would never come has come at last. I suppose emotions here in the Pacific are the same as they were among the Allies all over the world. First a shouting of the good news with such joyous surprise that you would think the shouter himself had brought it about. And then an unspoken sense of gigantic relief