A BULFORD couple who met during a chance meeting at a cinema are celebrating their 70th wedding anniversary today (Monday).

Bob and Muriel Batty met in August, 1946 when Bob, who was on leave from the Royal Navy Fleet Air Arm, went to the cinema at Bulford Camp to pick up his sister.

As he explains: “Muriel worked at the cinema with my sister and I went to bring my sister home and as we were going my sister said to Muriel ‘What are you doing tomorrow?’ and I said ‘You’re coming to Salisbury with me’. That’s how we met and it went from there.”

But, Bob admits that he may never have met Muriel that night as he had planned to go to Australia.

“If I hadn’t gone to the cinema that night we wouldn’t be here.”

They married the following year on January 16, 1947 at the Garrison Church, Bulford Camp.

By that time Bob had left the Fleet Air Arm and joined the fire service - serving as a fireman in Bulford and Tidworth.

They lived in Bulford Camp after they married and went on to have two sons Robert and Martin and a daughter Dilys. They now have three grandchildren and six great grandchildren.

During the Second World War Bob served in the Fleet Air Arm on HMS Indefatigable for four years.

After performing escort duties in the Arctic convoys the aircraft carrier was deployed to the Far East against the Japanese. On April 1, 1945, at 7.30am, he recalled the carrier was the first British ship to be hit by a Japanese kamikaze aircraft during the Okinawa landings.

Bob said “The aircraft with its 500lb bomb hit the armoured deck and blew a big hole in the island, the dented flight deck was filled with concrete and we carried on.”

And he was on the only British carrier to be at the signing of the Japanese surrender at Tokyo bay that year.

Muriel was helping in wartime efforts at home, serving in the Land Army and after getting married concentrated on the family home and bringing up three children.

Speaking about celebrating their platinum wedding anniversary, they said: “We’ve been happy and had a fairly good life.”

The key to a long marriage, he added: “It is just being honest with each other.”

Bob hopes they can follow in the footsteps of his parents, Rose and Harold, who were married for 74 years.