08/05/2025
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My wonderful grandparents π₯°
π¬π§ VE DAY: LOCAL STORIES π¬π§
This week, in collaboration with Surrey Heath Museum, weβre sharing the voices of local residents who lived through the war and VE Day.
Today, we remember Mrs Nancy Walker.
Interviewed on 5th December 2024 by museum volunteers, Nancy shared her memories of wartime Camberley. She was 18 when the war ended, working at Barclays Bank on the High Street. She sadly passed away in early 2025.
β‘οΈNancy recalled the bombing near Frimley Road:
βWe used to hear them [the bombers] every night with quite a different sound to our planes. And then, of course, when the bombs dropped, we heard them. The main one was by the grammar school [on Frimley Road]. And they dropped three bombs there this particular night, every window was out.
I think we wondered whether they were after the RMA [Royal Military Academy] because of the lake behind there. It is quite a biggish building.
The house opposite was completely flattened and somebody was killed and every window was out at the school but we still went and had our classes. At lunch time, the headmaster was outside sweeping up all the broken glass. There was no health and safety.
And no counselling. You just sort of went on with it, you know, you had to.β
β‘οΈOn VE Day, she remembered:
βI remember the announcement on the news. It was finally over and I believe it was in the evening because we went to work the next morning and all the girls turned up wearing red, white and blue. Nobody had discussed it. We just did it.
There was quite a joyous feeling. We worked as normal that day and we had to open the bank. But in the evening, most people congregated down the recreation ground [on London Road], lots of people there sort of, you know, milling about, and they were all really happy.β
Thank you to Surrey Heath Museum for preserving and sharing these powerful personal histories.
πΈ Nancy Walker and her husband in 1952