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Now I had a cousin in Burma — Stan Price his name was and I’d not seen him since childhood.

His mum and my mum were talking one day, and Auntie Annie said ‘my Stannie’s in Burma he’ll probably meet Dick’; it all seemed rather unlikely. But anyway, in a letter home I say, ‘by the way, this afternoon I was talking to a chap in the gunners and he comes from Wellington, I said he would know Craven Arms, which he did, and he said there was a chap from Craven Arms with them. I asked if his name was Price, and he said it was, so sometime this afternoon I shall probably see him. I’ll let you know in the next letter how we got on.’

The Price referred to in the letter was my cousin who came from near Craven Arms and was one of the numerous cousins who I’d not seen since childhood but I’d been told he was in Burma, but here he was in the same division. Not only that but he was in the artillery supporting our brigade.

I did not meet him that afternoon, but sometime later he came over to me while I was engaged in washing my socks n the stream. He said to some chaps ‘have you got a chap named Jones here?’ And they said ‘there he is over there, washing his socks’. We had both travelled thousands of miles to meet once again by a stream in the Burmese Jungle.

This story was submitted to the People’s War site by Becky Barugh of the ´óÏó´«Ã½ Radio Shropshire CSV Action Desk on behalf of Richard Jones and has been added to the site with his permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

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