A FLINTSHIRE care home resident shared her memories leading up to VE Day.

Molly Jones left her home in Colwyn Bay to join the Army in 1941, aged 19.

Following a six week training course at Chester she became a Signals Officer with the Royal Corps of Signals.

The mum-of-two, who is now 97 and lives at Wellfield Residential Care Home in Hawarden, said: “It was not a difficult job, once you learned to control the Morse code - it was simple really.

“We had messages coming and going all day by teleprinter or Morse, and we’d be dealing with despatch riders and office personnel.

“We were very friendly, and were always going out together.

“I was in Winsford, Cheshire, for 18 months and we used to go to the cinema and have fish and chip suppers It was very nice.

“The first board and lodgings I had was at the Rectory in Winsford. There were six of us in a room, but after a few weeks we went out into individual billets.

“I was lucky. I stayed with a lady who ran the village cake shop, and she always had a cup of tea and piece of cake for us personnel.

“It was totally different to my time in Colwyn Bay - I’d lived quite a sheltered life there because there were five of us in the family and we didn’t have a lot of money, so we didn’t go far out of that area.

“I used to be a conductor on the trams at Llandudno.

“But when I joined the Army, there was always something to do.

“You just had to get yourself stuck in and make friends.”

Speaking of VE Day itself, she continued: “I remember that day very well.

“I was in the signal box when it came through.

“We had a good celebration and the first thing going through my mind was being able to go home.”

It was during her time in the Army that Mrs Jones met her first husband Jack Harper, from London.

“I got married in July of 1945,” she explained, “just after the war ended.

“I never saw him apart from when he was on leave, until 1947 when he came home.

“We only had a little bedsit. That was all we could afford to rent, but we got by.”

Mr Harper died in 1969 and Mrs Jones later married her second husband Norman Jones, from Sandycroft. Mr Jones died in 1998.

Describing the time which followed VE Day, Mrs Jones said: “The comradeship was still there. People were still helping each other out and things were rationed then, so we’d be giving each other some extra butter or sugar.

“The children were quite happy, all they did in those days was play in the street.”

Mrs Jones, who has a 70-year-old son named Paul Harper living in Flint and a 63-year-old son named Kenneth Harper living in Ireland, said one of the many lessons she learned during her time with the Army was to “be kind to people.”

She explained: “I still always try and do more than one good deed a day.

“I think when I go to bed that if I’ve made one person happy, I’m happy myself.

“You need your friends around you - it is most important.

“My friends from Hawarden have been wonderful, especially with this lockdown.

“They have been writing and phoning me and I couldn’t wish for anything better.

“Once this is over, the very first thing I am going to do is go to my son’s for a Sunday lunch.”