Reunited after 70 years: Friends who served together as WAAF radar operators in WWII back together after discovering they lived just TWELVE miles apart ...

 
Two friends who served together during the Second World War have been reunited 70 years later after a chance encounter revealed they were living just 12 miles from each other.
Bessie Thomas and Millie Titshall were radar operators for the WAAF when they were both teenagers, and became close friends serving at a station in Inverness.
However, they lost touch towards the end of the war - and although they tried to contact each other during the following decades, they never managed to get in touch.

But when Mrs Thomas, 89, from Consett in County Durham, was reading her local newspaper she noticed an appeal for information about a former RAF base in Norfolk.

Although she did not know that base, she made contact with the enthusiast who placed the advert on the off-chance that some of her former colleagues might have served there.
She was particularly keen to find her old friend Mildred Greener - but when she was given a phone number for Millie Titshall, who she was told lived near her, she had no idea they were the same person.

 
Mrs Thomas called the number and asked, 'Do you know of a Mildred Greener?' - only to be told, 'That's me!'
The day of the pair's first conversation happened to be Mrs Titshall's 90th birthday, and came 70 years after they had last seen each other.
The two women, then aged just 17 and 18, first met at RAF Snaith in Yorkshire after volunteering for the Women's Auxiliary Air Force.

They were transferred together to radar operations in Inverness, but lost contact when they moved to different parts of the country.
The younger woman, then known as Bessie Shackley, met her future husband Larry Thomas while they were both being de-mobbed at the end of the war.
Mildred Greener also changed her surname when she married, and started calling herself Millie because other relatives shared her first name.
Mrs Thomas was so keen to trace her friend that she once called every number listed under 'Greener' in her local phonebook.
When the pair - now both widowed - finally made contact again, Mrs Thomas was so excited she immediately travelled to Mrs Tindall's Chester-le-Street home via bus and taxi.

Her first sight of her old friend was of her waiting on the street outside her house.
'I think I could have walked past her on the street, but she's still lovely and thin,' Mrs Thomas said.
Once the pair started talking about their time in the WAAF, they could not stop reminding each other of all their unusual experiences.
Both vividly remembered typing out messages on rice paper, which would be given to pilots so they could recognise beacon signals and then eat their instructions if they were captured.
Mrs Thomas said: 'Millie told me, "I used to eat it!" as we didn't get sweets very much - they were rationed - and I said, "That's what I used to do!"'

They also recalled circling the perimeter of the airfield, attaching metallic strips to planes in order to interfere with enemy radar.
'Mildred would get taken around in a van as she was smaller than me and couldn't reach up - and I had to cycle,' Mrs Thomas said.
Her daughter Marilyn, who was present during a second meeting between the pair, said they were soon laughing so much that they appeared to be shaking in photographs.
The two old friends now intend to keep in regular contact - and Mrs Thomas is keen to get in touch with other former colleagues too.