The Mystery on the Mantelpiece

David Bell uncovers the story behind a wartime gift to a young British soldier

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On a frosty New Year's Day in 1944, a young soldier from Newcastle married the love of his life with barely four hours to spare. My father, Corporal George Bell, a conscript with the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers, had one eye on the altar and the other on the clock. His last train back to barracks left at 6pm that same evening.

George and his bride, Eva, my mother, exchanged vows in their local parish church in a hurried ceremony. Eva's hands would have trembled, not just from the cold, but from the weight of their impending separation. Within hours, George was back in uniform and, for the next 650 days, their only contact would be ink on paper.

Regular letters filled with longing crossed the Channel as George embarked on a dangerous journey through war-torn Europe: landing in Normandy during Operation Overlord, then advancing through France, Belgium, the Netherlands and, finally, Germany.

George was no headline hero, just one of tens of thousands quietly doing their duty for king and country and, in George's case, holding on to the single hope of a safe return to his new wife Eva.

During Operation Market Garden, in the besieged Dutch city of Nijmegen, something unexpected happened, something that would outlive both the war and the man himself.