WW2 veterans urged to come forward now to mark 80th anniversary of victory

[WE Branch Fanatic]

Stamps made to mark 80th anniversary of VE Day - BBC News

A special set of stamps is being issued to mark the 80th anniversary of VE Day.

The collection of 10 stamps will honour men and women who made contributions during World War Two, while a mini-sheet of stamps has images of Dame Vera Lynn from different aspects of her wartime career.

Royal Mail will also be applying a special VE80 postmark on stamped mail in the week of the anniversary in May.

Emma Gilthorpe, chief executive of Royal Mail, said: "Royal Mail is proud to issue these stamps honouring the courage, sacrifice and resilience of those who fought for freedom and peace."

People featured on the stamps include:

– Mahinder Singh Pujji, a Royal Air Force and Indian Air Force pilot awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross and commemorated with a statue in Gravesend, Kent.

– George Arthur Roberts, the first black man to join the London Auxiliary Fire Service.

– Mary Morris, whose diaries described how she nursed troops returning wet and wounded from Dunkirk.

– John Harrison, who served in the Royal Navy on the destroyer HMS Belfast.

– Bhanbhagta Gurung, who fought in Operation Longcloth in Burma and was awarded the Victoria Cross for his bravery.

– Thomas Peirson Frank, a civil engineer and surveyor whose rapid-response teams repaired more than 100 breaches of the River Thames wall during air raids.

– William Tutte, a codebreaker whose work was key to decrypting the Lorenz cipher, the German code used for top-level communication and intelligence.

Dame Vera Lynn lived in the East Sussex village of Ditchling before her death in 2020.