MORE than 100 wartime munitions workers celebrated VE Day's 60th anniversary at what was probably their last big reunion.

Age has not dimmed the spirits of the 100 or so former Aycliffe Angels called back to the site of their Forties war efforts. Now in their eighties, the women are just a few of the 17,000 female workers at Aycliffe's Royal Ordnance Factory who fuelled the British Army's demand for amunition.

On Sunday, just like they did 60 years ago, they partied to mark the end of the war in Europe. But this time they had with them their children and grandchildren, born to live in freedom because of their efforts.

The women and their families were at Hydro Polymers which occupies a corner of the vast site where they faced daily danger. Spread over 837 acres the munitions factory was a sprawling complex of 1,000 buildings buried into the earth to protect them as much from the occasional accidental explosion as from the Luftwaffe's bombs. Hydro Polymers teamed up with Greenfield Arts and Community Centre to stage Sunday's tribute.

Former Angel Margaret Howe, the 82-year-old chairman of Shildon Over 60s, laid a wreath at Newton Aycliffe war memorial in what she believes will be her final tribute. She said: "We can't let people forget. Conditions at the factory were awful and it was only later that we realised what we had done."