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M Thompson, of Meadowhall Road, Rotherham, writes: “After the heartache and the trauma, it was time for us to let our hair down.

“I must take you back to when the War started.

I was seven years old in the October after the War was started in September 1939. At that age I did not know what it was all about.

Victory in Europe celebrations in Sheffield - May 1945

“My grandparents, who lived in Burgoyne Road, had an Anderson shelter in their back garden. I remember my father and grandad digging the hole and erecting it.

“I also remember the first air raid at night, my parents taking me to the shelter from our house on Strand Street, off King James Street.

“After that, I slept at my grandparents’ house until we had a shelter built in our cellar, so I was sleeping on the bunk in the cellar for a while. Some neighbours used to come in the shelter when a raid was on.

“My brother, who was eight years older than I, was called up to the Army in 1942. I thought it was great that my big brother was going to be a soldier.

Julie Wilson sent in this photo of a party that she said was held on or near to Wood Street, Hillsborough. She said: "My father is the boy at the front, aged nine years - he is now 84. He is called Herbert Salvin."

“On the day he went my father and I went to the station to see him off.

“When we returned home, we found my mother crying her eyes out. At that moment I knew it was serious. My mother had lost a brother in the First World War.

“As children growing up in the War, we did not know any different. Apart from some home service from school, we just got on with it.

“We did not know how lucky we were to come through unharmed.

“Then the big day came, it was over and the celebrating began. We had to have a bonfire.

"With my pals it was hatchets, saws and a barrow, we were off up Rivelin to get some wood for a bonfire.

“As well as the bonfire, people all out in the street dancing and singing. Someone got their piano out into the street and that made it better still.

“Everybody was decorating the streets.

“The next day my father and I had been to see my grandparents. As we came down Burgoyne Road at the bottom of Harold Street I had never seen anything like it, all bunting and Union Jacks.

“Outside Marriots fruit shop, strung across the bottom of Harold Street, was a huge banner with all the names of the people who lived in Harold Street who had served in the forces. So my father made one for our small street.

“Then we did it all again on VJ Day, but the bonfire was hard won.

WWe were getting some wood from the old open-air baths in Rivelin when we were chased by the water bailiff and had to pull the barrow full of wood up Roscoe Road to Roscoe Wood, but we did it.

“Looking back after 75 years, I bet the water bailiff was laughing at us struggling to get out of the way.”

Memories of Sheffield VE Day bonfire party celebrations and bunting in Walkley