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John Buckley is 85 and originally from Hawarden. He now lives in Wrexham.

On VE Day, I arrived home after being away for four years. I remember a radio on the way back, and it said King George 5th had announced that the war was over. That was how I first knew about it. My dad met me at Chester Station. When we got home, there were banners all over my house, welcoming me home- I’d been away in the Middle East and the Far East. And everyone was so kind. In the evening time, there was a piano, and I think someone had taken it outside, and they were all dancing and shouting, and having a party, and mum said ‘Well, we’d better go out and join them’. I said ‘Ok’. Well, I got out, and they were all saying ‘The war’s over!’ and going mad, but I was feeling, well, I was feeling good and bad, I suppose, or not well, because they were going on about the war being ended, and I’d just come out of Burma a few months, and they were still fighting there, people were still losing their lives. So the war hadn’t finished. And I found it strange that people were celebrating.

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