Some of the children who joined in the VE Day commemorations in the Fountain in 1995

A large crowd assembled at the Drumhead service in the estate on Monday, May 9, 1995, whilst members of the Hamilton Band led the parade through the city centre.

The Sentinel reported: “While the war ended 50 years ago, there are still many people in the city who remember those terrible years: there are those who played their part at home; those whose abiding memories are of barrage balloons; hardship, ration books and pawnbrokers; those whose typical Londonderry black humour treated the war, and the toll it took, with irreverence, and who saw to it that a shell-shocked victim of the bombing of Messines Park - who later lived in the Waterside - came to be known for the rest of his life as ‘The Rocket Man.’ And then there are those who left these shores to fight Nazi and Japanese tyranny where it hurt most, on the bloody battlefields and deadly waters of Europe and the Far East. Last Friday night, those veterans who were prepared to risk the ultimate sacrifice met again at Waterside RBL.”