THE streets of Worcestershire came alive with celebrations on VE day as the end of the war was announced, but not everyone felt able to join in. Vera Roberts, aged 91, was 26 in 1945, a mother of two, and the wife of Bill Roberts, pictured below, who was still overseas with the Royal Engineers.

She said: “I wasn’t miffed but I didn’t really go along with it because my husband was in Greece and there were still all the men out in the Far East and a lot of them didn’t come home. I could have gone out but I didn’t want to.

“I was pleased but it didn’t finish for me until Bill came home and then it was great.

“When I did feel like celebrating was when the atom bomb went off. That sounds terrible but I thought, ‘thank goodness for that.’ It was dreadful.”

Mr Roberts, who died two years ago, was away for six-and-a-half-years.

She said: “He was called up and went on November 15, 1939. I saw him at rare intervals. He was never close to Worcester. When I had our first son, John, in 1940 they let him come down from Scotland for five days and I also went over to Ireland when he was there.”

Mr and Mrs Roberts had a second son, Michael, in 1942 but he did not meet his father until he was three-and-a-half.

John, who was four in 1945, said he also remembered the VE day celebrations.

He said: “I can remember a lightening in the mood and the fact it was over and whoever was still about was going to get home.

“They rang the church bells again, I remember that.” He also remembered his father’s return in March 1946. He said: “He came back late in the evening. Me and Michael were in the same bed and our mum came in with this strange fella and she said: ‘This is your dad’.

“It was the first time Michael had seen him.

“All of a sudden there was this strange man in the house who happened to be our dad and we had to get used to him. It was hard.

“I never felt that close to him, like a bond I think I’ve got with my kids. We got on fine though. He was a gentle bloke.”

During the war, Mrs Roberts, who lives in Grosvenor Walk, St John’s, lived with her mother-in-law on the Bull Ring.

She remembered the 1940 bombing of the Mining Engineering Company Works (Meco) factory in St John’s in which seven men were killed and 60 people injured. She said: “I had been in town and I saw this plane come low. It seemed black and it was right by the cathedral. I came back home and they said about this bomb. I didn’t hear anything.

“I went up there with my mother-in-law to see. Her son worked at the Meco.

“If it had been a few minutes later they would all have been clocking out.”

Her memories illustrate the everyday ways the war touched the lives of people living in the city at that time. She said: “I can remember looking through my bedroom window and seeing all these men on Cripplegate Park, all in a line with these sticks over their shoulders. I wondered whatever they were doing but it was the beginning of the Home Guard.”

She also remembers workmen knocking a hole in one of her bedroom walls to be used as a sniper point in an invasion. She said: “They took out a few bricks and then they put them back in loose. It was the corporation, I think. It was all to do with defence. It was all very, very secret.” She also recalled the hardship that families through the city felt as rationing began to bite.

She said: “I don’t know how my mother-in-law fed us on what we got but she always rustled something up. They opened the public hall to do meals. It was in the Cornmarket where the car park is now. Anybody could go and it was very reasonable.” Life was not always unhappy, though, and Mrs Roberts said there were always parties, baby shows and flower shows held on what is now the King’s School Worcester playing fields.

The city’s youngsters also enjoyed the nightlife along with visiting Americans.

She said: “There was a big school by St Andrew’s Spire and a little wall and, as I walked past, all these girls were sitting all along this wall and I thought ‘whatever are they doing?’ “When I came back again the buses were all unloading with all these Yanks. They came in busloads at night.”

After the war in 1952, war leader Winston Churchill came to Worcester and was given the freedom of the city, an event both Mrs Roberts and John remembered. John said: “Me and our mum were walking down Bromwich Road and this Rolls-Royce came towards us and our mum said: ‘This is Winston Churchill’.

“I was only about seven or eight, and we stood there at the side of the road and gave the victory signal.

“He must have told his driver to slow down because as he went past he rolled the window down and lifted his hat to my mum.”