VE DAY was vitally important to Mary Maskell – it was the day she literally fell on her future husband.

Mary, now 79, of Oxford Road, Maidstone, then 18-year-old Mary Hayman, was celebrating the end of the war in Europe with her laughing and excited friends in Tonbridge High Street.

"We were all doing the palais glide and were in lines across the road," said Mary. "Soldiers – the Royal Signals – were billeted three miles out of Tonbridge, but doing the same as us across Tonbridge High Street.

"Their line in front stumbled, then our line fell on them and that was how I met my husband to be – Eric Bradburn, a 24-year-old soldier from Manchester.

"We married 11 months later, in May, 1946, and had three children. We moved back to Maidstone from Manchester, but unfortunately, Eric died, aged 41, of cancer.

"I eventually married again years later, but I will always remember that happy May, 1945. Good memories indeed."

Mary, the daughter of a steam train driver, who was just 14 when war was declared, had taken a group of young children to Summerhall Park, Tonbridge, about half-a-mile from her home.

"I remember it so vividly,” she recalled. "One of the children’s fathers came cycling to find us and said we must hurry home. War had been declared, so it was time to get home and under cover – and we all ran back."

Mary said that on VJ Day, she was at a street party and there was a raffle. "I won a doll dressed by a neighbour,” she said. “I named the doll Victoria-Jane – same initials as the day. I do wonder what happened to her."