Joyce Hughes, 85, Hale, Liverpool
Joyce, circled, with her mum, and today
During the war I lived in a terraced house in Vale Road, Woolton, with my parents Teresa and Jack Langley, and six brothers and sisters.
Dad and Mum worked in a components factory. I remember sirens and air raids. We used to go to a family with a shelter or to one in Gladstone Street.
We were only children, so it seemed like a big adventure. We were still going to school but had to carry little gas masks with us. Once, in 1944 when I was 10, we came out and a bomb had dropped on the next street. It only demolished one house but when we went back to ours, Dad went to put the key in the front door and it just fell backwards into the house. The windows had gone. There was soot everywhere but our little dog lived through it.
On the day the war ended there was a big bonfire at the bottom of the road, someone had pushed a piano out and everyone was singing and dancing.
A few days later we had a street party in the afternoon. I have no idea where the food came from but there was plenty to go around.