CHRISTOPHER STEVENS reviews The Repair Shop: VE Day Special on BBC1: For sheer emotional impact, VE Day special was Repair Shop's best yet
Silence can speak volumes. We'll hear a lot of heartfelt words today as politicians and presenters try to express the deep debt of gratitude we all owe to the wartime generation.
But as eloquent as any oratory was the stunned silence on The Repair Shop: VE Day Special, as a man named Eddy was presented with a display case for his father's World War II medals and memorabilia.
Eddy was literally speechless, for several seconds, struck dumb by the emotion of the moment. He couldn't move or utter a sound. And yet, when he first brought his dad John's moth-eaten RAF hat into the barn, he was articulate and considered, not a man easily lost for words.
John, who voyaged from his native Sierra Leone to volunteer for Bomber Command in 1939, was a trailblazer — one of the first black officers in the Royal Air Force.
Serving as a navigator, he was shot down over Ger-many and, badly injured, bailed out of the blazing plane. After being captured, he spent 18 months as a prisoner of war.
The hat, said Eddy, 'is part of him. If it looked in better condition, myself and my family will be over the moon. It deserves better. It's making sure that the suffering our fathers and grandfathers went through, to make sure that we could be free today, is never ever lost.'
Presenter Dominic Chinea echoed that sentiment as he placed John's hat, beautifully restored, in a glass-topped cabinet beside his military MBE and other decorations.
It made him think, Dom said, 'about how fortunate we all are now and how much freedom we have. It is really all thanks to his generation and everything they sacrificed.'
For sheer emotional impact, this might have been the best episode of The Repair Shop in its eight-year history. Wartime refugee Ruth brought a battered plastic doll that was her constant companion as she fled Vienna, aged two-and-a-half, in 1939.
With astonishing bravery, a British mother of four children journeyed to Austria to save Ruth from being sent to a concentration camp.
The doll's plastic limbs were disintegrating, and it was missing one leg altogether. Seeing how the damage could be repaired with cellulose, acetone and a wax mould was both a chemistry lesson and a marvel of craftsmanship.
The most touching story of all was also the most mundane. Royal Navy veteran John, aged 101, served during the war as an aircraft engineer on board the carrier HMS Formidable.
He kept a discarded clock from a cockpit as a souvenir, and gave it to his new wife, Connie, for their first Christmas in 1947. During 66 years of marriage, Connie never went to sleep without the clock beside her, until she died.
Now that it has been restored, John said, 'I can put this on my bedside table and every night I can say, 'Goodnight Con, God bless you, love you.'
By now, I have to admit, I was weeping.
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