Dorothea Barron (left), in white clothes, teaches yoga. — Screengrab/YouTube/@AFP
HARLOW, United Kingdom: Centenarian Dorothea Barron recalled the wave of relief she felt when she heard World War II had finally come to an end.
“Thank goodness that’s over,” the British Navy veteran remembers thinking.
Eighty years on, the spritely 100-year-old — who now teaches yoga and saw in her big birthday with a celebratory flight in a Spitfire fighter plane — is among an ever-shrinking number of veterans with firsthand memories of the war.
Exactly how many former WWII servicepeople there are in the UK is unknown.
While experts estimate there are still several thousand, the 80th anniversary of Victory in Europe Day, marked on May 8, will be among the last major British wartime commemorations with a substantial veteran presence.
As Britain marked the anniversary with four days of celebrations from Monday — including military parades, flypasts and street parties — Barron told AFP how it felt to hear that the war that had overshadowed her teenage years was over.
The news came as “a release, a tremendous weight off your shoulders”.
But it also marked an abrupt shift for members of the armed forces.
“It was ‘keep the uniform, here are a few clothing coupons, a few food coupons, go home.’ And that was all,” Barron said.
Aged 20, she did not anticipate how tough life in post-war Britain would be. It was a “terribly difficult” period, Barron said.
“I won’t say unhappy, but there were uncertain times. You never knew what was going to hit you the next day.”
‘Can you feel it?’
Speaking from her home near Harlow, north of London, Barron went on to recall the years of post-war reconstruction with extraordinary vim.
She has been teaching yoga for 60 years, and every Monday she holds a class close to her home.
Her flexibility — as demonstrated by her downward dog pose, with heels on the floor and back perfectly flat — impresses even her young students.
“Can you feel it in the back of your legs?” she asked at a recent class.
“If you want firm boobs, that’s the pose,” she told her dozen or so students aged 20 to 95, unfazed by their groans.
“I feel lovely, relaxed and stretched,” she said as she walked home afterwards.
Spitfire flight
Barron celebrated her 100th 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 really was so wonderfully exciting,” she said, beaming.
With such energy today, it is easy to imagine Barron’s determination at 18.
She “desperately” wanted to join the Women’s Royal Naval Service, or Wrens, as they were known.
“We weren’t going to have the Nazis taking over our country,” she said.
But Barron feared she was too short to make the cut.
“I cheated like mad and cut out cardboard heels to make me look taller, and I built my hair up, puffed it up,” she said.
“I was only five foot two inches (157 centimetres), but I think they saw I was so keen to become a Wren that they thought ‘we’ll let her through’.”
Barron taught troops how to communicate using visual signals and Morse code.
And ahead of the D-Day Normandy landings, she helped test the portable Mulberry harbours, which were towed across the English Channel and allowed large numbers of troops and vehicles to reach France.
But she did not know what the structures were for at the time, and only later realised how they were deployed.
“I was rather delighted,” she said. “I thought: ‘Oh, I did do something useful then’.”
She planned to mark Victory in Europe Day in the Netherlands for Dutch Liberation Day, before taking part in a service at 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 a great-grandmother. Andrew died in 2021, and Barron still talks about him lovingly.
It takes a lot to stop Barron from being cheerful, but she is concerned about current events — especially Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which has left conflict raging in Europe once more.
“Nobody wins a war,” she said.
