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It was in 1945. I was 19 years old. I had just broken off my engagement after 3 years with someone and although I knew it was the right thing to do, I still felt very sad.

My friend Alice's husband Ernie was serving in the RAF in Egypt. Ernie's close friend Les was feeling a bit down because Ernie was being draughted home (Married men were sent home first when the War ended.) Les and Ernie had been together for four years.

Alice suggested that Les and I should become pen friends, which we did. We wrote to each other for six months before Les eventually came home. I had kept my letters strictly friendly but Les was sure we were meant for each other, even tho' I lived in Essex and he lived in Wandsworth, which then seemed a long way away as travel was not so easy then.

Well, Les was eventually due for repatriation in January and we arranged to meet in London on the Tuesday, the day after he arrived in England.

On the Monday evening I washed my hair and was sitting on a chair in front of the fire to dry it (no hair dryers then). My father had just gone out of the front door to put some scraps in the pig pin (every road had these during the war), when an airman asked him where No.6 was. My Dad said: "Oh! you must be Les. Go right in." So Les' first sight of me was in old clothes and hair all over my face. You can guess how I felt when I looked up and saw him standing there. He said he couldn't wait until next Tuesday. But he must have liked what he saw as were together for the next 54 years.

Doris Carpenter
Silver Circle Reading Group
Wandsworth

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