VE Day 80: We Were There: Trailer, certificate and where to watch
First-hand accounts from WWII veterans and those who kept the home fires burning
Year: 2025
Certificate: 12
There are, inevitably, very few people still alive who even remember the Second World War, let alone fought in it. For the 80th commemoration of Victory In Europe Day, the BBC gathered first-hand accounts from surviving veterans, many of them more than 100 years old, and some involved in the liberation of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.
Radio 5 Live presenter Rachel Burden hears their stories, and also talks to former child evacuees and to Jamaican volunteers who served alongside British forces. Meanwhile, the women who helped to drive the war effort at home remember the moment Winston Churchill announced that Germany had surrendered and the Royal Family appeared on the balcony of Buckingham Palace in front of rapturous crowds celebrating the end of six years of war.
This is part of the We Were There project, which has, since 2019, been marking 80th anniversaries of each year of the war. (60 minutes)
