Victory in Europe and Victory over Japan: 80th Anniversary

David Reed Excerpts

Tuesday 6th May 2025 Commons Chamber

[David Reed (Exmouth and Exeter East) (Con)]

At the outbreak of the second world war, the National Service (Armed Forces) Act 1939 introduced conscription for all men aged between 18 and 41. Like so many of his generation, my grandfather Harry Fry Davis Reed, born in Plymouth in 1913, received his call-up papers. On 20 June 1940, he reported for duty in Exeter. He joined the newly formed 12th Battalion of the Devonshire Regiment, or the Devons. It was a battalion largely made up of conscripts serving for the duration of the war.

Just one month later, the Nazi bombing of Plymouth began, and the city he called home, where he had grown up, lived and worked, came under relentless attack. Friends, neighbours and fellow Plymothians were killed. Streets were destroyed, and entire communities were changed forever.

In the early years of the war, my grandfather helped defend the coastal areas of what is now my constituency of Exmouth and Exeter East. That knowledge speaks to me when I walk along local beaches at home. I often reflect on what it must have felt like to guard those shores under the threat of invasion, not knowing what would come next, only that you had to stand your ground.

By 1943, the 12th Battalion had been redesignated as a glider-borne infantry unit within the 6th Airborne Division. Their mission was to fly into combat aboard Horsa gliders, which were unarmoured, fragile aircraft made from wood and canvas. The thought of falling from the sky into enemy territory under fire in such vulnerable aircraft is almost unimaginable, but that is exactly what they did.

In 1944, my grandfather deployed to France for D-day. He left behind his young wife—my grandmother—and their two-year-old son, my father. While he went to war, his family remained under the shadow of the Luftwaffe as the bombing of Plymouth continued. Thousands more Plymothians would lose their lives. When Harry returned, it was to a city transformed by devastation and to a community that had endured untold suffering.

But the war was far from over. In March 1945, his battalion took part in Operation Varsity—the airborne crossing of the Rhine. To this day, it remains the largest airborne operation ever conducted on a single day in one location. In the final weeks of the war they reached northern Germany, just south of Wismar. There they maintained their kit, kept sharp and waited, not knowing what horrors lay ahead.

Victory in Europe was declared on 8 May 1945. The Devons were granted leave, and many attended a thanksgiving service in a nearby village. Relief no doubt filled the air, but the war’s final chapter was still to be written. In the days that followed, they came face to face with the unimaginable: the atrocities of the Nazi concentration camps. Those images would no doubt remain etched in their minds forever.

I never had the chance to meet my grandfather, as he died many years before I was born, but I am deeply proud of him. His story, while personal, is not unique. That is exactly why I share it. Up and down our United Kingdom, families carry stories just like this—stories of ordinary people thrust into extraordinary circumstances, and stories of courage, endurance, loss and love. These stories are not rare; they are woven into the fabric of our nation.

Though I have served in the Royal Marines and experienced war myself, I still find it hard to truly comprehend what that generation went through. Their sacrifice, on a scale that few of us today can fully grasp, was made in the name of freedom, in defence of democracy, and in defiance of tyranny. It was a burden carried for all of us. To that generation—our greatest generation—we owe a debt that can never truly be repaid. But we can remember, and we can honour, and we can ensure that their legacy lives on. Because of their courage, we have lived in peace. For that, I will always be grateful. We will remember them.

[Several hon. Members rose—]