VE Day 80: RAF veteran Victor, 101, cuts ribbon on Ulster Military Memorial Arch on Shankill Road

​Victor Clarke from east Belfast cut the ribbon jointly with UUP MLA and Royal Irish Veteran Andy Allen on the 80th Anniversary of VE Day.

"The arch was beautiful and a huge credit to them," he said of the organisers.

However the Omagh native says his own experience of VE Day was "absolutely zero".

"I was out in southern Rhodesia training as an RAF fighter pilot and it was just like any other training day.

"It wasn't really until later than evening or even the next morning before we got that news.

"It didn't make any difference to us because we were still training and due to go to the far east."

He was due to take fighters to be used against the Japanese, however all training stopped several months later and he was brought home.

"I would say at that point my feelings were probably relief that it was all over."

At age 19 his main role during the war was in Manchester, where his job was to load bombs onto bombers for raids against Germany.

"The biggest one I ever handled was putting a 4000 pounder into a Mosquito. It filled the entire bomb bay - they normally carried eight 250 pound bombs or four 500 pounders."

He believes this bomb was dropped in a major raid on Dresden near the end of the war.

He visited the city 20 years later and found it "totally rebuilt and absolutely beautiful".

Due to shift patterns he never knew the air crew who dropped his bombs.

"You just knew the next morning that maybe half a dozen Halifax or Lancaster bombers had gone out but only five came back. It didn't affect us at all. You didn't think of those things at the time.

"People frequently ask me, 'Was I not scared?' but at that age it was just excitement."

Nowadays he is all too conscious of the human cost of war, however.

"War is totally useless. It achieved nothing at the end except bitterness and a lot of hurt.

"But if you are attacked, obviously you defend yourself. Britain was never preparing for war until war arrived."

The closest he came to danger was when he was in London three or four times.

He often had to flee to bomb shelters, where they heard doodlebugs striking the capital.

Victor will be 102 in February and puts his longevity down to "keeping the old brain box going - don't let it stagnate".

After the war he married and had three children.

He achieved the rank of major with the TA and retired as a bank manager aged 62.

He then served 20 years with St John's Ambulance. He still plays golf twice a week - but only manages nine holes per day now.

Reflecting on VE Day now, he says: "What we are all thinking about are the various small wars going on across the world - they are absolutely futile - if only they could be stopped."