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This story was submitted to the People’s War site by Matthew Smaldon on behalf of Mr Dorian Hathaway and has been added to the site with his permission. Mr Hathaway fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

'I was born in 1931, and during the war I attended Margate Road Secondary School in Headington, Oxford.

At the start of the war, I remember that all the signposts were removed, street names, and so on. People were putting tape over their windows, in case of the bombing, but there wasn’t any in Oxford. In fact one of the big incidents during the war was when the power station in Osney caught fire. People assumed it was due to bombing, but it wasn’t.

My eldest brother, John, had talked about joining up when he was still in school, and he volunteered for the Royal Corps of Signals. He was killed at Tobruk. We weren’t told what happened officially, but after the war one of his friends came to visit my mother. He said that John had been driving a vehicle when it had gone over a mine. He was killed three or four days before his 21st birthday. My mother never got to visit his grave, and I haven’t yet, but we are planning to.

My other brother, Ken, also went to the desert, but this was at the end of the war, helping to tidy up I suppose. I think he was in transport — well, in all the photos he was stood by a lorry!

I remember seeing all the planes going over at D-Day. There were 4 engine bombers, gliders being towed by other planes. We were out in the street in Headington playing football, early evening. And we saw all these planes going over — the sky really was full of them.

By VE day I was an apprentice baker and confectioner at the Cadena Café in Cornmarket. The smell of coffee wafting down the street from Cadena used to be famous. There used to be two floors — a balcony were people would sit, and downstairs they’d have violinists and a cello player. I used to have to make cakes out sugar substitute, dried eggs, all sorts. I turned up for work on VE day and was sent straight home — no work that day! Cadena Café closed in the late 1960s. It was where HMV is now.

On VJ Day I remember going into Carfax, standing on the steps of what is now the Edinburgh Wool Shop with my friends. We watched a bugler who was stood part way up Carfax Tower. I remember that he played the Last Post. There were so many people there you couldn’t move. Everyone was throwing things in the air, cheering and kissing. But VE Day felt like more of a big thing to us, perhaps because it felt closer to home.

After the war I just felt relief it was all over. I think my mother felt bitter, because of the loss of my brother, but she didn’t speak about it, not to us.'

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