WE have just celebrated the anniversary of the end of the Second World War and remembered those remaining and those lost who confronted and defeated the forces of evil which would have crushed us.

Members of the civil services on the home front rightly took their places alongside veterans in parades across the land.

Let us also remember with pride all the mothers who brought up young families for six years almost single handed. Through air raid warnings and raids, with little money, shortages of everything, and without the support of a father in the home, they brought us through.

My father, an LNER goods guard who was too old for military service last time, was often away from home for 72 hours at a time, riding behind essential war material all over the country. We never knew where he was or when we could expect him home.

Many fathers were in distant lands with contact by letter only. We older children helped where we could but our mothers shouldered huge responsibilities.

We picked potatoes, carrots, peas and swedes for the farmers, wild brambles and mushrooms for the pantry and rose hips for vitamin C syrup. This was distributed for young children with condensed orange juice.

We went on farming holidays harvesting barley and our arms were red raw stooking the bails.

We also worked for three weeks before each Christmas sorting mail at the Post Office.

We helped get the smaller ones into shelters when the siren sounded and helped in the gardens from which jam, bottled fruit and pickles went onto our pantry shelves.

Whatever needed doing was done by whoever was capable and there to do it. It was not special!

Mothers worked much, much harder.

George Appleby,

Leighton Croft,

Clifton, York.

Updated: 11:12 Tuesday, July 12, 2005