This Remembrance Day, we’ve collected a series of WWII stories from the (grand)parents of our team here at Casemate.
Our Production Manager shares an exclusive, previously unpublished letter from her great-grandparents on the day Denmark was freed from German occupation.
Photo and translation included!
The letter was sent from my great-grandparents to their daughter and her husband (my grandparents), although slightly oddly they’ve signed it from grandma and grandpa. It is dated 5 May 1945, which is our official ‘Liberation Day’, when Denmark was freed from German occupation.
“…congratulations on the peace, which we hope will follow on from the capitulation. It’s been busy here today for our home forces, the arrest of informers and other followers is happening apace, Georg is at the telephone exchange, Alfred and Børge are at the gasworks [my grandmother’s brothers and brother-in-law], now there is a curfew from 9pm to 6am and tomorrow will probably be the same. People don’t want to go home and don’t suppose we can expect the English here until Monday or Tuesday, and let me mention at once that Yelva [my grandmother’s sister] has had a son, he weighs approx. 8 ½ lb and they are well, Axel is proud. We greatly sympathise with the loss you’ve suffered on Grandpa’s death [my great-grandfather, died 2 May 1945], but he was tired. It is only well that he didn’t have to suffer for too long, only he should have heard the bells of peace, but he didn’t, it wasn’t to be, we will remember him as the good Dad I understand that he was…”
It’s kind of apt that there is both a death and a birth at this time. Yelva’s son, my father’s cousin, was Paul Erik Rytter, born 3 May 1945. His parents emigrated to California and he went to Vietnam, where he died in 1965 at the age of 20, less than two weeks into his first tour of duty.
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