Harlow, UK: Centenarian Dorothea Barron remembered the wave of relief she felt when she heard World War II finally ended.

“Thank God it’s over,” the British naval veteran remembers thinking.

Eight years later, the Spritely 100-year-old is now teaching yoga and then in his big birthday with a festive flight in a Spitfire fighterfly, among an ever-shrinking number of veterans with first-hand memories of the war.

Exactly how many previous wwii service persons are in the UK are unknown.

While experts estimate that there are still several thousand, the 80 -year anniversary of Victory in Europe Day, marked on May 8, will be among the last major British war memorials with a significant veteran presence.

As Britain marked the anniversary with four days of festivities from Monday – including military parades, fly pastes and street parties – told Barron to AFP How it felt to hear that the war that had overshadowed her teenage years was over.

The news came as “a release, a huge weight from your shoulders”.

But it also marked a sudden shift for members of the armed forces.

“It was ‘Store the uniform, here are a few clothing coupons, a few food coupons, go home.’ And that was all, ”Barron said.

20 years she did not expect how hard life in Britain after the war would be. It was a “terribly difficult” period, Barron said.

“I don’t want to say unhappy but there were uncertain times. You never knew what would hit you the next day.”

‘Can you feel that?’

Talking from his home near Harlow, north of London, continued Barron to remember the years of reconstruction after the war with extraordinary vim.

She has been teaching yoga for 60 years and every Monday she has a class close to her home.

Her flexibility – as demonstrated by her downward dog bag, with heels on the floor and back perfectly flat – even impresses her young students.

“Can you feel it in the back of your legs?” she asked in a recent class.

“If you want firm breasts, it’s the positure,” she told her dozen or so students aged 20 to 95, not by their moaning.

“I feel lovely, relaxed and stretched,” she said as she went home afterwards.

Spitfire Flight

Barron celebrated his 100 -year birthday in October 2024 by flying in a Spitfire, a Royal Air Force aircraft that played a crucial role in the Battle of Britain in 1940 against the German Luftwaffe.

“It was really so wonderfully exciting,” she said, beaming.

With such energy today it is easy to imagine Barron’s determination at. 18.

She “desperate” wanted to join Women’s Royal Naval Service or Wrens as they were known.

“We didn’t want the Nazis to take over our country,” she said.

But Barron feared she was too short to cut.

“I cheated like crazy and cut out cardboard heels to make me look higher, and I built my hair up, breathed it up,” she said.

“I was only five feet two centimeters (157 centimeters), but I think they saw that I was so eager to become a WREN that they thought ‘we will let her through’.”

Barron taught troops how to communicate using visual signals and mother code.

And ahead of the D-Day Normandy landings, she helped test the portable Mulberry ports that were drawn across the English Channel and allowed a large number of troops and vehicles to reach France.

But she did not know what the structures were at the time, and only later realized how they were deployed.

“I was pretty happy,” she said. “I thought, ‘Oh, I did something useful then’.”

She planned to mark Victory in Europe Day in the Netherlands for Dutch Liberation Day before attending a service in Westminster Abbey on May 8, which will also be attended by the British royal family.

During the war, Barron met her husband Andrew, who was in the Royal Air Force.

They had two daughters, and Barron is now an grandmother. Andrew died in 2021, and Barron is still talking about him lovingly.

It takes a lot to prevent Barron from being cheerful, but she is concerned about current events – especially Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which has once again left the conflict in Europe.

“No one wins a war,” she said.