Mother's VE Day poem: 80 years on 

Glenda Lightowler was nine at the time

A Ballasalla resident remembers being dressed in a blue frock and taking photos to celebrate VE Day - 80 years ago. 

Glenda Lightowler was nine years old at the time.

She and her mother Winifred Mary moved to the Isle of Man to live with a relative during the war for safety.

Her mother, a matron at the Buchan School, wrote a poem about VE Day, which Glenda here recites for Manx Radio: 

Picture supplied to Manx Radio. Glenda and others from the Buchan School with her mother, Winifred.

A fair blue sky and a blue green sea

Bright blue were the frocks of the girls

Like sapphires, the eyes of the littlest ones sparkling beneath the curls

And under the haze, which was somehow blue but softened the picture down

Was the chalky blue of the stones of the quay and the blue slate roofs of the town

My heart should have leapt at this glorious scene, rejoicing in the view

Yet, I couldn't respond to the 'should have been' for feeling a little bit blue

My thoughts they wing their way to where the grey dust of Cherbourg has filled the air

And other villages beside the sea

No longer peaceful havens are in Normandy

I see in my mind's eye the trees, blasted and broken

Once green like these, the blackened turf where children used to dance

And what are now the battlefields of France

And where a million other brothers in blue grey join with their brother nations

And they will fight on

Not ceasing fire 'til England has her blue days again 

And knows no ill

-Winifred Mary