VE Day at 80: Stories of courage, sacrifice and survival

For almost an hour, 102-year-old Stewart Taylor has been recalling his time piloting Dakota transport aircraft in the Second World War. The memories come back thick and fast, often peppered with smiles. It's only when he reflects on the meaning of VE Day 80, and why remembrance matters so much, that the words are suddenly more difficult to find.

"I have a list of 50 people," he says slowly, tapping his temple. "Some I can't name, but I can see their faces. Some I was at school with, some lived down the street, some I served with, some were whole crews." His voice cracks as he struggles to get the words out, then finishes: "They never came back. Simple as that."

Taylor's handshake is firm as he welcomes you into the Preston house where he lives entirely independently. Just back from a solo break driving to the Lake District in his camper van, close to where the RAF veteran sits is a photograph of himself with Kathleen, his wife for seven decades until her death nine years ago. They met in 1937 when he was 14 years old.

"King George VI had made Lancaster, where I was born, a city to mark his coronation," he says, smiling. "There was a pageant with local schoolchildren doing a tableau of Saxon times. We were at the back, a serf and serfette. We were told to mingle, so Kath and I mingled for 70-odd years."

The son of a factory foreman and a seamstress, Taylor left school at 15 before getting a job as a junior clerk in local government. In 1942, with war intensifying in Europe and Singapore falling to the Japanese, Taylor, then 19, joined the volunteer reserve.

At that time the furthest he had been from home was 20 miles. By the end of 1946 he would see swathes of Canada, and journey through Libya, Iraq and the Indian sub-continent to reach Burma (now Myanmar), from where he would fly all over the Far East.

"I’d never flown at all before the war, of course," he says. "We had 12 hours' flying training at boot camp in England before I was sent to Canada to join the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan in early 1943."

The programme was created by the Allies to counter a shortage of pilots. "We took a six-day Atlantic crossing on a troop ship with no defensive convoy accompanying us, then a train to Calgary, where we trained in Tiger Moth biplanes near a field with bison roaming, before moving to Saskatchewan. Then it was Prince Edward Island on the eastern seaboard, supporting coastal patrols in the Gulf of St Lawrence and learning how to fix mines to drop on submarines."

It was 1944 before he docked back in Liverpool. But the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan, which produced some 50,000 pilots during the course of the war, was a victim of its own success. "There were too many of us," says Taylor. D-Day had been and gone before he reached operational status.

"I expected to be on Liberator bombers sweeping the North Sea for submarines. Instead, I was co-pilot on a Dakota with Air Transport Command." As the Allies advanced through Europe, Air Transport Command was responsible for flying in troops, delivering essential supplies and evacuating wounded soldiers.

"We were the lorries of the air, taking off every morning at 5am, crossing the Channel to make landings in France, Belgium and Holland, towing gliders, dropping parachutists, carrying supplies of ammunition, mail, the odd general.

"I did three trips carrying in reinforcements for the Battle of the Bulge in the Ardennes [the last major offensive Hitler attempted on the Western Front] at the end of 1944. It was dangerous – we had no armaments and didn’t carry parachutes."

By VE Day he was training near Loughborough for a posting to Burma, to relieve crews who had been there for three years. "VE Day didn’t make a big difference to us because we were going to the Far East," he says. "We were given a day off so we went for a pint or two in Loughborough."

He and Kathleen married on 4th August 1945, with Taylor on leave for his honeymoon in Chester when the Japanese surrendered 11 days later. But thousands of British troops remained in the Far East after VJ Day to manage military administrations in reconquered territories, repatriate prisoners of war and reoccupy Allied colonies, as well as providing food and supplies to colonial territories.

"We had to go to keep the troops flying around and supplied, all in monsoon weather with no radar or oxygen. First I was based in Rangoon, then Singapore, flying all over the place – Hong Kong, Sumatra, Java, Thailand, Cambodia. We were flying supplies, mail and passengers, some diplomatic, some Gurkhas. A lot of what we did out there is forgotten now."

Taylor returned home in November 1946 to find his previous job as a clerk had been given to someone else; he retrained as a primary school teacher, ultimately becoming a headmaster. He and Kathleen had two children, and as he talks his great-grandsons are playing in the garden.

"I thought I’d go back to the Loughborough pub for another pint on VE Day this time," he says. "But it’s a branch of Lloyds Bank now."

Instead he’ll be at a reception in Lancaster, and watch as a beacon is lit in the city – one of more than 1,000 nationwide – to mark 80 years since the end of the war in Europe.

"So many of the ones I knew who didn’t come back were air crew," he says. "They're who I’ll be thinking of."

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