The Hastings Observer of 12 May 1945 said “People of the Premier Cinque Port can look back with pride today at the fortitude and vigour with which Hastings, despite a depleted population and constant perils as a Front Line coastal town, maintained its civic business and social life throughout nearly six years of total war, now ended by the ‘Cease Fire’ in Europe.”
The war began on 3 September 1939, but the Observer in 1945 recalled that on 31 August that year “the local authorities were advised by telegram that the evacuation of London was to begin the next day, and the arrangements which had been carefully made by the borough as a reception area were efficiently put into action with the aid of an army of 600 voluntary workers. For the first two days school children with their teachers arrived at the rate of five trainloads a day; mothers and smaller children from Deptford and Greenwich came on the second and third days. Expectant mothers arrived in buses, and evacuated hospital patients (two trainloads) were taken to the local hospitals.
“By the evening of Sunday 3 September, when the announcement of war with Germany was so dramatically followed by the first air raid warning – given for a single unidentified plane – about 7,000 persons from the danger areas of London had become the responsibility of Hastings Council.”
But there was no immediate attack on England, and the 1945 Observer described what happened in the following months. “Entertainments, which had closed down, began to reopen before the end of September. RAF trainees, billeted at Marine Court and elsewhere, brought their own note of wartime liveliness to the town, and before long the population had settled down to a new way of life that soon proved to have its enjoyable side, in spite of the lengthening black-out restrictions and shortages.
“The RAF boys were cordially welcomed into many local homes; knitting for the Forces gave women a useful antidote to war worries; and as time went by the Dig-for-Victory campaign was launched locally, new allotments were sited. Sunday cinema show came into operation, increasing attention was paid to the salvage of paper and other valuable waste; and the town hall found war-time quarters at Summerfields” [the school where the Police Station is today].
The war first hit Hastings seriously on Friday 26 July 1940, when a single German raiding aircraft swept across the town early in the morning and unloaded 11 high-explosive bombs. Some fell harmlessly on the Central Cricket Ground, where the Priory Meadow shopping centre is now. But the others inflicted serious damage to many houses on top of the West Hill, and caused the town’s first fatal raid casualty: Mrs Violet Gooday, a teacher aged 34, who was killed at 139 Priory Road. Nine other people were injured.
Between 26 July 1940 and 8 August 1944, when the last flying bomb incident was reported locally, Hastings and St Leonards experienced 85 enemy air attacks of various kinds. A total of 550 high-explosive bombs fell in the borough, plus 12 oil incendiary bombs, approximately 750 small incendiaries and 15 flying bombs. As a result of these attacks, 154 people were killed, 260 were badly injured and were detained in hospital, and 439 were slightly injured. The total number of houses or other buildings completely demolished and to be demolished was 463, and 14,818 properties were damaged.
The fall of France to Germany on 22 June 1940 put Hastings in the ‘Front Line’. The town was declared an evacuation area, and the departure of the London schoolchildren in mid-July was followed on 21 July by the evacuation of 3,000 local children to Hertfordshire and Bedfordshire. All the schools closed. Enemy air attacks were almost non-stop in September and October 1940, prompting the voluntary evacuation of tens of thousands of people. The borough’s population, which normally numbered more than 65,000, fell to 22,000.
The Observer recalled that 1941 had been fairly quiet, but “1942 will be chiefly memorable for the tip-and-run raids by fighter-bombers, which were made with increasing violence by the enemy along the south-east coast, and from which Hastings and St Leonards suffered sharply.” Then on 11 March 1943 “in the space of two minutes the borough was to experience the heaviest air raid of the war, when great destruction was caused in the Silverhill district and other parts of the town, and 39 people were killed and 90 injured.”
It was the liberation of France in June 1944 that ended the dangers of the war in Hastings. On 25 August “barbed wire and defence blocks which for years had transformed the appearance of the sea front were swept away with most commendable speed, the beaches were quickly reopened, and the first steps in the revival of Hastings and St Leonards as a popular and prosperous seaside resort were taken.”
VE Day on 8 May 1945 was celebrated in the following days by more than 24 street parties around the town, including one in Boyne Road in Clive Vale which had suffered much bomb damage in August 1942. Following VE Day, on Sunday 20 May there was a mile-long victory parade of over 3,000 men, women and youngsters from the seafront to Alexandra Park, where 10,000 people took part in a united service of thanksgiving for victory and peace in Europe.
The war in the Far East continued until the Allies dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan on 6 and 9 August 1945. The Japanese then announced their surrender on 15 August, and formal surrender documents were signed on 2 September. The United States officially recognizes 2 September as VJ Day.
This year, to commemorate VE Day, at about 9pm on Thursday 8 May the beacon on the East Hill will probably be lit.