Speyside couple survived blitz and desert campaign
Register for free to read more of the latest local news. It's easy and will only take a moment.
A LONG distance courtship survived the Blitz of London and fierce fighting in the Desert campaign.
Desert Rat Jim Ince and wife-to-be Joan met for the first time at the end of World War Two – six years after they first started writing to each other.
The devoted couple this week celebrated 65 years of marriage at the Parklands Speyside home in Aberlour, where they are both residents.
The Londoners reminisced on the fraught start to their relationship when for both of them just surviving was a daily challenge.
Jim (93) was a corporal with the Royal Army Medical Corps attached to the 1st Armoured Division.
A proud Desert Rat, Jim was in the thick of the action in the Middle East as a medic on field ambulances.
Joan (90), a telegraphist during the war, recalled how the relationship first started.
"My cousin was in the Army with Jim and asked him if he would like a pen friend," she said.
"We wrote to each other for six years altogether and didn’t meet until he came back from war."
The relationship blossomed from that point on and the couple married in 1946 in Fulham.
While Mr Ince had spent his time dodging German bullets and helping wounded British colleagues, Joan had an equally fraught time surviving the German blitz of her home city.
"You lived life to the full because you wondered if you were going to be alive the next day," said Joan.
"I had a friend who asked me one time if I was frightened of the raids. My family didn’t have a shelter but her family did, but one night she was killed after a bomb hit their shelter."
Joan said their long distance relationship was the norm in those war-troubled times.
"I think it was fairly normal. We kept in touch by letter but all the youngsters now do it on the computer.
"The hardest part is when you meet for the first time. You think you know someone through their letters but then have to get to know them properly."
After the war Jim went on to make spectacles, work as a bus conductor and latterly a postman, while Joan raised the couple’s four sons.
The couple moved to Aberlour last year from their Hertfordshire home to be closer to three of their sons, Robert, who lives in Craigellachie; Andrew, who is at Inverness and Chris, who is a teacher at Gordonstoun. Their other son, Graham, still lives in Hertfordshire.
The couple have four grandchildren and two great grandchildren.
Joan said they love their new life in Scotland and feel at home in Moray.
She said tolerance and respect was the key to their longevity, and a little bit of good luck.
The couple enjoyed an anniversary party with music and received visits from local councillor Pearl Paul and the Lord Lieutenant of Banffshire Clare Russell.
