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I had three brothers and two sisters. I was in the air force, and when I got moved over to Waregem, which is in Belgium.

During the journey over, we travelled on a boat for about three days from Harwich. When we got there, it had been raining during the night, and I’d had hardly any sleep, but we continued anyway. I was driving a jeep with a friend of mine and we went to go around a corner and of course I put my foot down to brake, and it slipped off and hit the accelerator. We hit the wall. I pushed my nose around the side of my face, and my friend cut his eye on the thumbscrews on the window, but we were taken in to a café where a couple of girls gave us a Cognac; (I’d never tasted it in my life before). Then they took us to a Doctor around the corner, and he fixed us up again.

The next morning when they took us up to the Medical Centre at Waregem, and I remained there. Another day, when they were taking me out again to have my nose straightened I was just laying there on the bed, and who was there but my brother! It turned out that he was stationed at the other end of the airfield!

At that moment the Doctor said “I’ve looked at your x-ray, and your nasal passage isn’t blocked. We can straighten it if you like…?” I looked at my brother, and he simply said “Well it’s your b****y nose!” The Doctor then asked me if I was single, and seeing as I was he said he’d straighten it.

Of course my brother was then working on the same airfield that we had to go on to; quite often he would pop in to see me: which was great fun.

Some time after I had the same call that I quite often had from the orderly room saying “Your brother’s here to see you” so I walked round to the billet and it was my eldest brother! He was in the Army. He’d come with the 8th Army right up through Italy, and got commissioned to bring some mail to someone not far from where we were. So all three of us were there at one time.

My other brother was a royal engineer attached to the Indian Army, and he went down to Rangoon to see my brother-in-law — that was on one of the islands close to Hong Kong.

It doesn’t finish like that when I say it’s a small world…

I finished up just outside Hamburg on pay-parade, and I saw a Flight sergeant the other side of the room, but I only saw the back of him. I thought “I know you”, so I crossed over, and it turned out to be a chap who lived next door but one to me in Margate! We used to walk together to work, I’d be going to the down to the Wintergardens, and he’d go on to the High Street where he worked. He said “by the way, I’m going to Hamburg tonight to the Victory club, I’m meeting an ATS girl”. I replied “Oh two’s company you know…” “Oh, no, nothing like that he insisted” So I met him down there that night, and she turned out to be a girl who lived down the road from us, and she used to walk with us sometimes too.

This story was submitted to the People’s War site by Becky Barugh of the ´óĎó´«Ă˝ Radio Shropshire CSV Action Desk on behalf of Ron Cook and has been added to the site with his permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

See more of Ron's stories:

• I made some very good friends during the war
• Of course that was the start of it
• It buried it’s nose in the centre of the road
• At work
• Aeroplane engines
• My Brothers’ families

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