I AM a 93-year-old ex-staff sergeant of the Hereford First Battalion regiment, and one of four brothers in the regiment who served in the Second World War.

I am writing because the regiment was part of the force pushing the Bosch out of Belgium, and in a book that my wife dug out, there was a paragraph about Belgian refugees being sent to Hereford in the First World War, and this leads me to my story from the Second World War.

During one battle, we were called to a halt and passed an old lady who was standing on her doorstep. She shook me rigid when she said “How’s Hereford looking, Sergeant?” I replied “OK last time I saw it, but what do you know about Hereford?”

She then told me she was a First World War nurse at Hereford General Hospital where she had tended some wounded Belgian soldiers.

She fell in love with one and after the war was over, went out to Belgium and they got married.

She said she was born in St Owen’s Gate in Hereford, which shook me more, because that was where my mother was born! It turned out my mum and her brothers all went to the old Blue School.

I never had chance to ask her maiden name, because we were told to get on the move. It was one pleasant experience in a bad time.

REGINALD ROBINS St Guthlac Street, Hereford