I served for 25 years in total.I was 17 on VE Day, just about to turn 18, when it would have been compulsory for me to join the Army. My father was a factory worker, so my elder sisters were sent to live with an aunt and I went to the workhouse as a baby. We had to push ourselves forward and look towards another day.The VE Day street parties were the biggest spontaneous national celebration Britain had ever seen. Many people now, say, in their 80s and 90s, would have been children or teenagers at the time the official end of the conflict on the Western Front was declared on May 8, 1945. Betty Dickinson and Hans Kuhn met at a fete in Leicestershire after the war ended VE Day anniversary rekindles memories for a great grandmother waving to The King. "We were going into Rome every evening because the war was over as far as we were concerned," He said the end of the war "was just a feeling of relief, mainly". It was wonderful. ‘When it comes down to it, there’s nothing better than a street party.’At 25, I was based in Bovington, Dorset, at the Armoured Fighting Vehicle School. Later on in my life, my wife Betty, who passed away last year, would tell me about how she had been at Piccadilly Circus on VE Day and of the happy Londoners and American soldiers all celebrating together.I was evacuated from London when I was 14 and sent to Exeter, before joining the Army in 1943. "He just grew on me, and of course I got pregnant, didn't I? Terry Harrison visited his father's grave for the first time when he was 65 So it was the thought of them merrily weaving home from the pub, with my Dad pushing my Mum in a wheelbarrow, that brought home to me the realization that something truly significant had happened.If further confirmation was needed that historic events were taking place it came shortly afterwards when I arrived home from school to find a glass bowl in the middle of the dining table containing three curious curved yellow tubes. Strikes, IRA bombs and the Yorkshire Ripper dominated headlines, yet that summer ‘we had the largest number of street parties ever,’ says Gittins – 12,000 in all.Since then, we’ve had street parties for the weddings of Charles and Diana in 1981, and William and Kate in 2011. she said.Mr Kuhn said he would never have imagined, back then on VE Day, that he would be married to an English girl 70 years later.Terry Harrison and his sister Susan were born 11 months before VE Day, on 9 June 1944, after his mother had an affair with a black American GI.Most "brown babies" fathered by black GIs were given up for adoption or sent to children's homes, but Mr Harrison's mother refused to give her children away.Her husband Charlie Harrison was away fighting, and when VE Day came she still had not told him about the twins. Why? Every time it shocked me, seeing parts of the city completely flattened.After college, I spent another year in training then was sent to India in 1946. It was very exciting – everyone was screaming, laughing and making merry. We’ve been asking readers to share their family photos and memories of VE Day celebrations 70 years ago. Captain Tom Moore has shared his bittersweet memories of VE Day, saying the joy was tempered by thoughts of friends still fighting in the Far East.. newspaper archive. I stood on the makeshift stage that one of our neighbours had built and sang a song called ‘Alice Blue Gown’. Jellies were set in pots and sandwiches filled with dripping. Shortly after that they started to get ready to send us back to Germany. Finally, the best china, which hadn’t been used for years, was brought out.This wasn’t the first time the nation had hit the streets to celebrate, says social historian Chris Gittins, referring to the ‘peace teas’ of 1919. All the other kids are giving the victory sign in the approved Churchillian fashion; I, alone, have got it the wrong way round and appear to be making a very rude gesture at the photographer. Friday 8th May 2020 marks 75th years since VE Day - the moment that the guns across Europe fell silent and the war with Nazi Germany came to an end. By Caroline Lowbridge BBC News. Terry Harrison said he and his twin sister were accepted by their five white siblings

If anyone did harbour any doubts about the Allied cause, or the necessity for war, they were surely swept away when, in April 1945, the first reports began filtering back to Britain of the discovery of the concentration camps. However, this feeling of jubilation was relatively muted as we still felt in the middle of things. John Weir, who lived in Shettleston, recalls walking from Parkhead Cross to George Square, where thousands of people had gathered to celebrate. These are external links and will open in a new windowCelebrations erupted across the UK upon the defeat of Germany and the end of World War Two in Europe.A public holiday called Victory in Europe Day - or simply VE Day - was declared on 8 May 1945.Seventy years on, six people recall what the end of the war meant to them.Hans Kuhn was a 20-year-old German prisoner of war in Tennessee, USA, when the war ended.