CLOSED HER EYES AND CHOSE
SCHOOLGIRL AND P.O.W. PEN FRIEND ENGAGEMENT RING SENT When girls at Orange Hill School, Edgware, were each asked to choose a name from a long list of Allied war prisoners to whom they might write as pen pals, 15-year-old Joan Sapsford could not decide on any of the servicemen, so she closed her eyes and circled her index finger on to the paper. Her eyes opened to find she had chosen Flight-Sergt. Howard Martin (21), of Port Pirie, Australia. Now three years later Joan has received an engagement- ring from Howard, and is excitedly awaiting a sea passage to become Mrs Martin. Joan’s mother told a newspaper reporter at their home in Barnetway, Mill Hill: “The couple wrote at least once a week until Howard was released at the end of hostilities.
“Then he came to England to com valesce and visited Joan, whom he thought still to be a schoolgirl. But she had grown up,- and after a few visits Howard proposed,” Meanwhile Joan and her new ring are the envy of fellow-workers at Hendon Council offices.
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https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/BPB19461021.2.35
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Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 10, Issue 40, 21 October 1946, Page 6
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183CLOSED HER EYES AND CHOSE Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 10, Issue 40, 21 October 1946, Page 6
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