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I was just approaching 16, I can remember the absolute joy and jubilation, it upsets me to think about it. My friend Ellen Young and I lived in Walton and we knew that something would be going on in town. We went down by tram to St Georges plateau and it was absolutely jam packed with people. People were dancing, singing, I don’t know where the music came from Liverpool people have music inside I think. We danced till midnight and our feet were so sore, we took our shoes off and walked from town in our sticking feet back to Walton.
There were people in the street whose sons were away, whose husbands were away during the war my fathers brother was in the war. My father was lame in one leg, so he wasn’t called up. My mother wasn’t called upon to do war work. I did war work though, I was 15, we were asked to help out at Stanley Hospital. We thought it was marvellous to be helping the nurses we cleaned the dirty sheets. That was my first glimpse of a man’s naked body, whilst changing sheets with a nurse.
The war was such a dreadful, traumatic experience; everyone was so ecstatic that it was over. People were trying to scrape together rations for kid’s parties.
60 years on, on the anniversary of VE day, I’ve got so many memories of the war; everyone had someone who was involved in the war. I was weeping for all these girls with boyfriends in the war. VE day was like the sun had come out.

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