WITH the pandemic putting a stop to many public gatherings this year, a town council has marked the 75th anniversary of VJ Day with a service held last week

Ledbury Town Council and the Royal British Legion had hoped to be able to hold an event to commemorate the 75th anniversary of VJ Day on Saturday, 15 August.

However, as with other towns and cities around the country these plans had to be changed due to Covid-19.

A service of remembrance was held at St Michael’s & All Angels Church, where the descendants of those service men from Ledbury who lost their lives in the Far East, were invited to join Ledbury Town Council and the Royal British Legion to commemorate VJ Day and the anniversary of the end of World War II.

Following the short Service of Remembrance the mayor, councillor Daniel Vesma, and the president of the Ledbury branch of the Royal British Legion, Lloyd Meredith, then went on to lay wreaths at the foot of the newly restored War Memorial on the High Street.

The son of a former editor of the Ledbury Reporter funded the restoration of the town's war memorial, to the tune £30,622.

The generous offer from Stuart Heaton, aged 95, a former RAF navigator on Lancaster bombers, was discussed at last week's full town council meeting, where his kind gesture was widely praised and welcomed.

VJ Day marks the day in which imperial Japan surrendered in World War 2, in effect bringing the war to an end.

The term has been applied to both of the days on which the initial announcement of Japan's surrender was made – August 15, 1945, in Japan, and because of time zone differences, August 14, 1945 - when it was announced in the United States and the rest of the Americas and Eastern Pacific Islands – as well as to September 2, 1945, when the surrender document was signed, officially ending World War 2.