Famous Yorkshire folk share their memories of VE Day

Keighley-born Captain Tom Moore recently raised more than £30m for the NHS by doing 100 laps of his garden in time for this 100th birthday. Aged 25 at the time of VE Day, Moore had served in India and Burma during the war but was working as an instructor at the Armoured Fighting Vehicle School in Dorset at the time.

When VE Day happened I was stationed in Bovington. I was training troops to operate tanks. We were given the day off and everyone was very happy, but the war still continued in the East.

Sir Patrick Stewart, actor, director and Emeritus Chancellor of Huddersfield University. He was four years old at the time.

I have no memory of VE day except that provided by a photograph I have in a file in London.

The photograph was taken on a patch of bare ground at the bottom of my street, Camm Lane, in Mirfield. Our corner shop, which is how it was known, is in the photo and there may even be a glimpse of The Towngate Working Men's club facing it on the other corner.

There was a time when the Steward of this club was my grandfather, Freedom Barrowclough. The last time I was in Camm Lane that building contained a number of classrooms of Mirfield Grammar School. I never went there but from 1951 to 1955 I was a pupil at the newly opened Mirfield Secondary Modern School.

There must be over 50 people in the photo, half of them children, including four year old me, sitting on the grass, with a sandwich in my hand and a big grin on my face. My nine year old brother, Trevor, is also in the photo. He has recently returned to live in Mirfield. I recognize some of the children, Dennis Marshall and my friends - I think sitting beside me - Fred Fisher and Trevor Brook. There are a lot of adults, mostly women or old men, which you would expect. Along with a lot of flat caps. I think my mother is in the photo. If I remember correctly it is a very sunny day.

This is a very important photo - and memory - carefully preserved.

Dickie Bird, 87, the retired cricket umpire, was a 12-year-old boy at the time of VE Day. Dickie, who now lives in Staincross, Barnsley, said his father was a miner who was about to go to France with the Army when the war ended.

“I remember hearing the explosions in Sheffield, which wasn’t too far from where I was living in Barnsley with my family.

“I was too young to really appreciate what was going on but I remember having to shelter under the dining room table.

“We lived in New Lodge in Barnsley at the time. My parents worked hard to make things seem normal for us children, but they were strange times.

“When VE Day came you could sense the relief. Up until that point we had to take our gas masks everywhere with us over our shoulders and we often had to go to the shelter at our home in Park Avenue.

“I was at Raley Secondary Modern School and I don’t think we kids really understood how serious everything was. I’m sure our parents did.

“But when VE Day came there was bunting and parties. You could sense the relief. It only seems like yesterday, I can’t believe it was 75 years ago.”

Sir Bernard Ingham, Margaret Thatcher’s chief press secretary and Yorkshire Post columnist. He was 12 at the time.

I am ashamed to say it but VE Day is now but a blur in my memory. I was 12 at the time, deep into soccer and Hebden Bridge Grammar School homework. I have vague recollections of a remarkable outburst of dancing and general rejoicing on Calder Holmes as people shook off their usually undemonstrative reserve. The killing was over – or at least in Europe – but Japan had yet to be defeated. The nuclear age had still to come.

I think the best way to sum it up is a great outpouring of relief up and down Calder Valley after over five years of living on the edge of a volcano. Mind you, Hebden Bridge was just about as far as you could get from that edge.