The witnesses Survivors from across Europe share their war experiences

Survivors from across Europe share their war experiences

- Kate Connolly Caroline Davies Maris Hellrand

"I joined the WRNS when I was 18. I was a visual signaller, which meant that I had to go out in all weathers to signal to ships coming into harbour. We also took part in training the boat crews who took the troops off the big liners and transported them to the waters off Normandy for the D-day landings. "When Germany surrendered, I was based in the Isle of Wight. There was just sheer delight. We all went completely mad. But there was also the remembrances, the friends you'd lost. Nobody wins a war. Nobody. Everybody loses."

'We've not lived so dangerously since then as we do now' Irmgard Müller, 96, from Northeim in Lower Saxony, Germany, was working as an administrator for the local mayor in May 1945.

"Northeim was a Nazi stronghold so was heavily defended. We got through the war quite well, until the last days when our railway station was bombed, several houses were reduced to smithereens and 37 people died. In the evenings the British air force dropped their remaining bombs on us when they were returning from Berlin. They were so low-flying, I swear I could see into the faces of the pilots.

"Then came the final days and we knew the Russians were coming from the east, and the Americans were coming from the west. We were terribly afraid the Russians would get there first. Half the population of Northeim escaped into the woods in fear. After three days I made my way to the town hall to see what was going on. But the mayor, who was a Nazi bigwig, and all the other Nazis, had fled.

"War is the worst thing there is. It feels like we've not lived so dangerously since then as we do now. Even the cold war wasn't a patch on now, whether in Ukraine or the Middle East. It's like we didn't learn anything.

I remember the rationinglots of porridge with black syrup, and pilchards' Nick Treadwell, 87, an art gallerist in Vienna, lived in Hove during the war, with his mother, sister and aunt.