The wartime sweethearts reunited by love of Spitfires

WHEN Joe Roddis and Betty Wood said a tearful farewell at Worthing railway station in 1944, they did not expect to meet again.

The wartime Spitfire mechanic had fallen in love with the WAAF corporal but they could not be together because Wood had a fiancé who was returning from the Middle East.

But true love waits – in this case for 60 years. The sweethearts were reunited after Wood, by then a widowed grandmother, switched on her television to watch a documentary about Spitfires, and was amazed to see Roddis appear on screen.

She wrote to the television company, and they met once more – fittingly enough, on a railway platform. Romance blossomed and the pair set up home together when widower Roddis was 83 and Wood 84.

Their tale is told in Spitfire: A Very