Two Wolverhampton World War II veterans to attend VJ Day 80th anniversary memorial in Staffordshire
Two Wolverhampton veterans will be in attendance at the Royal British Legion's 'Remembering VJ Day' at the National Memorial Arboretum.
On Friday, August 15 the Royal British Legion, in partnership with the Government, will hold the National Commemorative Event to mark the 80th anniversary of VJ Day and the end of the Second World War.
King Charles II and the Queen consort will be in attendance in Alrewas, Staffordshire for the commemoration, as will several veterans of VJ Day.
In that group of survivors will be two men who served with the British Navy during the war, 100-year-old Bob Gelder and 100-year-old Bill Redston, both from Wolverhampton.
Redston, a Wolves from Tettenhall, turned 100 in November and asked people to make donations to the Arboretum as a present to him.
The centenarian was part of the D-Day Invasion of Normandy, with his motor launch escorting a convoy of essential supply vessels to Utah Beach the day after it had been captured by U.S. troops.
He joined the Royal Navy Coastal Forces as a commissioned officer when he was just eighteen, and a few months later he became First Lieutenant on motor launch ML 191, where he served throughout the Second World War.
After D-Day, Bill and his motor launch sailed to Rangoon in Burma, where he spent the rest of the war patrolling the Irrawaddy River searching the jungle for Japanese soldiers.
Once the war ended in the Far East, he spent some time in Singapore in charge of Japanese prisoners of war, before returning to the UK in 1946.
The Arboretum/NMA has always been a place close to Bill’s heart, and he has attended major commemoration days there, including VJ-Day 75 in 2020, where he met the then Prince Charles, and D-Day 80 earlier this year, where he met the Duke of Edinburgh and was one of only 26 D-Day veterans present on the day.
He also received the Legion d'Honneur medal for his services on D-Day at the Arboretum in 2021, which he described as one of the proudest moments of his life.
Friday's commemoration will feature 400 members of the Armed Forces and include music performances, readings and veteran testimonies, as well as a flypast from the Red Arrows and historic aircraft from The Battle of Britain Memorial Flight.
Paying tribute to all those who served in the Far East and the Pacific, a national Two-Minute Silence will be held at midday, followed by a one-hour commemoration at the base of the Armed Forces Memorial.
The event will be broadcast live on BBC One and BBC iPlayer from 11:30am, and will also be available to view on a large screen within the grounds of the Arboretum for members of the public.
