Sir, - When I was five years old I lived with my parents and four brothers at No 17 Victoria Terrace, Southsea, which was almost a suburb of Portsmouth, where my father was chief training instructor to the Royal Navy.
One day in November around lunchtime my mother called us upstairs to the front bay window to look out down the street where two uniformed sailors were calling to each terraced house, knocking on the door and saying something to the housewife, and then moving on to the next one.
There was no television, virtually no radio, telephones were only for the wealthy and no evening papers were being printed for reasons of national economy. So the only way to communicate with the population was by sending sailors, soldiers and airmen door to door to announce that on the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month in 1918 the Armistice had been signed and the Great War was over. - Yours, etc., Michael H. Coote,
Bushy Park Road,
Rathgar,
Dublin 6.