TRIP DOWN MEMORY LANE

Today we celebrate the momentous day 75 years ago when the guns fell silent across Europe and our lads came home from war. Readers Geoffrey Bywaters and Victor Challis share their precious wartime memories here…

Now 80, Geoffrey was just five on May 8, 1945, and has sent in this photo of the street party where he lived in Whetstone, North London.

“I am back row right of the children’s photo – and you can even see a Daily Mirror poking out of the tablecloth on the picnic table.

“My dad was an air raid patrol warden. He must have seen some unpleasant sights but for me it was a big adventure and bomb sites were a magnet.

“I can remember at night being carried on my dad’s shoulder with searchlights probing the sky, the sound of ack ack guns and the patter of shrapnel hitting the ground. Us boys would collect it for its iridescent colours.

“In 1945 we faced V1 rockets – Doodle Bugs! There was no air raid siren but we would hear a rumbling, throbbing noise. We would stand listening and when its fuel ran out, the engine would cut out. We would then dive under the dining room table and wait for the explosion.”

Born the year war broke out, Victor, 81, also remembers the air raid sirens and bombs falling in the last few years of the war.

He writes: “Clothing was, like food, rationed, but my mum had either saved up enough rations or been given a hand-me-down winter coat for my older sister.

“One night she was wearing it when the bombers came over quicker than we could get to the shelter, so my mum said, ‘get under the bed quick’, but my sister wouldn’t. Mum asked her why and she said, ‘I’ll get my coat dirty’.”