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This story was submitted to the People’s War site by Stuart Marshall from Crawley Library and has been added to the website on behalf of Cyril Botterill with his permission and he fully understands the site’s terms and conditions.

Joan and Cyril Botterill celebrated in June their 64th wedding anniversary. Cyril and Joan went out together from 1939 and Cyril was called up to join the Royal Signals in 1940.
On embarkation leave in 1941 they decided to seek the approval of parents to marry and, after obtaining a Special Licence which allowed them to marry quickly, they married at St Peters Church Berkhamsted on the 14th June 1941.
On the top deck of a bus they set off for their three-day honeymoon with family members in Ruislip and Buckland Wharf then it was back to barracks at Orpington, Kent.
Only an occasional meeting was possible before Cyril embarked from Gourock on the Clyde in Scotland in July via Cape Town, Durban to Bombay. It took until 1st September for the convoy to arrive at Bombay because of the need to avoid enemy submarines. The convoy divided here and Cyril’s brigade went up the Persian Gulf to land in Basra, Iraq.
The other half of the convoy finished up in Singapore, subsequently they were overrun by the Japanese and most of them were taken prisoner. A lucky escape for Cyril!
In England, Joan kept the home fires burning, was called up and served in the administration of the local Home Guard Battalion HQ in Hertfordshire. She particularly recalls the five-mile walks to work on snowy days and being overtaken by officers in army vehicles who were not allowed under regulations to offer her a lift.
The many letters written to each other to and from the Middle East initially took ages to arrive but, as the months and years passed, Airgraphs helped to cut down on the time taken for them to welcome the arrival of the latest news of each other. Airgraphs were a form that you wrote your message on and then were photographed and printed onto very thin paper and sent on. There were no telephone conversations in those days or any prospect of leave to go home.
After Alamein things began to look a bit brighter for Cyril and Joan but it was over four years from July 1941 to November 1945 before they were together again. In the meantime, Joan had managed to rent a converted florist shop in Kings Langley to set up as their first home and it was at that door that Joan welcomed home a rather dusty husband on Repatriation Leave. It was a great joy for both of them to be spared through such dangerous days to come together again — even though it was June 1946 before official discharge from the army allowed them to return to a full family life.

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