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This story was submitted to the People's War site by a volunteer at Bletchley Park's VE Day street party on behalf of Evelyn Sanderson and has been added to the site with her permission. Evelyn fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

"I remember that my father was in the Home Guard. He was a coal miner so he was exempt from fighting as he was in an important job — it was essential. So he joined the home guard, so when he wasn’t working he helped out when he could.

I was 2 years old when the war started and 7 when it finished. I remember having to leave all your things ready in the night to put them on in a minutes notice. We used to wear the siren suits — an all in one item of clothing with a hood and a zip. It was convenient and you could get fully dressed in seconds. When we heard the siren my mother used to come in with my sisters as there were a lot of us. The older sisters would help the younger sisters, and then we would go to the Anderson shelter which was in the garden.

I remember the games we played when we weren’t sleeping. They were talking games. We used to play “I packed my bag to Timbuktu and in it I put ----- ---“ and then you would add an item to it. It was a memory game and the person who couldn’t remember all the words lost.

I remember the Sheffield blitz, it was especially bad. My father thought we weren’t going to be safe so he decided we needed to go to the woods, but we never made it as it was so bad. Halfway there he had to go into a communal shelter and in there we found my grand mother and my older sister. The next day when we got home the house had been bombed. All the windows were broken, the doors were off and all the crockery was smashed and we couldn’t live there. So we went to live with my father’s mother until the house was ready. I remember going to a warehouse and being given blankets, tin plates, tin cups and anything else we needed. At the back of our road there was a church and the church hall was used by the APP wardens, the men and women. It was bombed and they were all killed. We used to play on that bomb site as children.

My biggest and happiest memory was VE day. The streets were decorated with welcome home signs painted in white on houses, and V signs. There was music playing, everyone dancing, kissing, laughter and jubilation. I remember all this food we hadn’t seen in years,; cakes, jelly and ice cream. Even people who didn’t have any children used to help with the parties. The streets were full of parties; they went all the way down. Every street had its own party.

The schools had brick shelters in the playground and we used to wear out gas masks in a box on a string and do air raids in the shelter. They very young children had a Mickey Mouse tongue on it to make it look less scary, but they looked even scarier to me. As my mother had a small baby she used to have to put her in an oxygen tent in a form of a box and you pumped air into it, so the baby could breath".

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