The Belgian Bride

In 1939, at the outbreak of war, many young men still in their teens volunteered for duty in the armed forces. Alan Granville White, a nineteen-year-old from Nuneaton in Warwickshire, was so taken with the idea of flying that he enlisted in the RAF. After a short spell as a radio operator in light bombers, he was transferred to the new long-range radio detection stations called 'Chain Home'. These were the pioneer units of a brilliant early warning system better known as RADAR. In late 1944, now a Flight Sergeant, Alan was sent to Mons in Belgium close to Hitler's final desperate assault in the Ardennes. One night at a party organised by the RAF and the USAAF in Mons, Odette Moreau, an eighteen-year-old Belgian girl, asked for help with a misbehaving gramophone. Alan volunteered and in an instant, both were propelled into a whirlwind romance. Alan also discovered that Odette, her parents, family and friends had witnessed dreadful tragedies as well as suffering at the hands of the occupying forces and collaborators. They even survived a 155km walk to the coast, fraught with danger, only to be forced to turn around and head back to Mons.