Dramatic journeys in five people's lives with Desmond Wilcox
Love Letters
In wartime Lancashire Betty Allen , then 26, went to a GI dance and agreed at the end of it to keep a date with an American air force sergeant. They never kept that date because of a series of accidents, mistimings and his posting to train for one of World War 11's most daring bomber raids. They wrote letters to each other - many of them. But he was shot down over the Ploesti oil fields and reported killed in action. Betty married someone else and the pile of letters - which had become increasingly more loving - was tied in a ribbon. Then
Chuck Bridges surfaced, alive and recovering from wounds, in a prisoner-of-war camp - determined to return to
Britain and marry Betty.
She told him it was too late - the letters between them stopped. Forty years later they met again, Betty a widow, he happily married and living in New Mexico. It was an affectionate reunion in memory of the wartime romance that never happened.
Research PENNY HALLOWES
Film cameraman DOUGLAS CAMPBELL Film editor MARGARET RENWICK Director ALEX MCCALL
Producer DESMOND WILCOX BBC Scotland
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