People think of Armistice day as cheering crowds but five died that morning... a mum thought her son was finally safe but was told he had been killed

For many it was a moment of overwhelming joy, but also of sadness at an almost incomprehensible waste of life for a whole generation. At 11am on November 11, 1918 the First World War came to an end and Armistice was declared.

While the ceasefire heralded a hopeful new era of peace, its immediate aftermath left soldiers, civilians and children with mixed emotions, from celebration to confusion and even despair.

A new immersive sound installation at the Imperial War Museum is set to reveal the intimate memories of 32 people including volunteers and conscientious objectors who were there.

The clips from the museum’s sound archives, were recorded over 30 years and have never been heard before now.

I Was There: Room of Voices, which opens tomorrow, includes personal audio recordings from people who all had very different reactions to the news.

Curator Richard Hughes says: “I have tried to select a broad range of opinions to look at an event that affected millions of people. It’s a mixture of grief and sadness and joy and celebration.”

Here we reveal just a few of the memories from the new exhibition, part of the IWM’S Making a New World season.

“If you went out people were singing and dancing in the streets, if you went by train everybody was singing and dancing in the trains, everybody went haywire, singing and dancing, it was wonderful, crowds everywhere.”

“They brought out a piano into the street, and they set up tables all down the middle of the road, everybody scrimped on the rations to make whatever they could. And everybody danced and sang and, oh it was amazing... they were wonderful street parties.”

“You couldn’t move and they were burning cars, and people were driving about in cars, and on roofs of taxis, and it was an extraordinary sight”. “I loved my dad you know, and he died with that terrible flu, that was a shocking thing... I didn’t know about the Armistice see, because we’d been up night and day with my dad, and when I heard the maroons [a “My mother had a friend, Mrs Lethbridge, she had one son, and he was called up. And on Armistice Day, she thought, ‘Oh good, it’s over and he’s safe’. And the telegram came to say he was dead.”

“We were coming down to Oddicombe Beach. Suddenly all the little fishing boats put their flags up and they said ‘The Armistice’. Daddy’ll come home! That’s all I could think about.”

“There was a German prisoners of war camp fairly near, near enough for us to hear pretty nearly every middle day, a band come out and play. And on Armistice Day, the band turned out, played very slowly, obviously from memory, the hymn ‘Now Thank We All Our God’.”

Jane Cox worked at Schneiders Garment Factory in Mile End, East London, throughout the war and was 18 when Armistice was declared. Her lasting memory was of celebration. Eileen Larkin was just 10 years old when she saw“absolute bedlam” break out in Trafalgar Square on Armistice Day. Dorothy Lester was 11 and living in London when Armistice was declared.

Clara Thompson was a 13-year-old schoolgirl living in Hull at the time. She also remembered the celebrations that followed the ceasefire. Caroline Rennles was one of the civilians hearing the news in England who had little to celebrate. Caroline, 19, was a munitions worker at Slade Green and Woolwich Arsenal in London. All she could think about was the death of her father two days earlier. UNAWARE

Rennles