A Lasting Wartime Romance

1944: I was posted to 123 wing 84 T.A.F. in Normandy. This wing comprised 4 squadrons of rocket-firing Typhoons in close support of the advancing armies. We travelled through Normandy, Merville - Armentieres - Lille into Belgium. I was a cook in the officers' mess and it was tragic to note every day the empty places in the mess - the pilots who failed to return: British, South Africans, Poles, French, Dutch, etc. From Belgium we progressed into Holland via Arnhem to an airfield near Tilburg which had been a German base. On New Years Eve of 1944 the wing was rushed through Antwerp - flying bombs included - to assist the army in the Battle of the Bulge at Bastogne.
We then returned to Tilburg, where we employed local girls to serve in the officers' dining hall. To cut a long story short, I courted the head girl, who spoke good English, and in April 1947 we were married in Worthing, Sussex.
We lived in England for 43 years and in 1990 came to live in Zwolle in the Netherlands to be close to our only daughter, a nurse, who had gone to work in Holland in 1978 and had in her turn married a Dutchman. They are both still working in the provincial hospital in Zwolle.
Alas in July 2001 my dear wife passed away but I still live in Holland with my happy memories of a wartime romance that lasted 54 years.

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