LAST week in Yesterday Once More we wrote about the wartime Royal Observer Corps in York, as remembered by Les Marsh, whose father was a member of the corps.

Our main photograph, reproduced this week, showed the interior of one of York’s two Royal Observer Corps’ headquarters, 9 Group, some time in early 1940s. Bernard Marsh was sitting, centre back – but taking centre stage in the photograph were a number of young women. We asked readers who recognised any of them to get in touch.

Reginald Harman, 85, of Askham Lane in Acomb, has duly done so. One of the women in the photo was his wife, Winifred.

In the photo we showed last week, Winifred – then still Winifred Bonney – is at the right of the photo, next to the man standing at the picture’s edge.

Mr Harman also had a number of other photos, both of himself and Winifred, taken during the war. And he had a touching story of wartime romance to tell, too.

He himself was in the RAF during the war – a “tail-end Charlie” rear gunner, who flew first in Wellingtons and then in Halifaxes.

A Londoner by birth, who had worked for Ford at Dagenham before volunteering to fly with the RAF when he turned 18 in 1944, Reginald was posted to Rufforth to train to fly Halifaxes.

It was while stationed there that he met Win at a dance in York.

“One of the lads at Rufforth said: ‘Eh, there’s a place called Acomb’,” he recalled. “We all rode in on our bikes.”

They went to a pub. “And someone said: ‘There’s a tanner op – a dance – next door’.”

The RAF lads trooped next door, and there he met Win. He liked her straight away. “It was her manner – cheerful, jolly, good for a laugh. She used to say: ‘Bonney by name, bonny by nature!’”

He ended up walking her home that night, and the next time they met, he was invited in to meet her family. “I said: ‘You’ve tied my feet under the table!’” he jokes.

They started courting, and he continued to see her when he was on leave after he’d been posted to RAF Full Sutton with 77 Squadron in January 1945. They used to joke about her job, which involved charting the movements of enemy aircraft on huge maps. “She used to say: ‘We’ll get you home!’ And I used to say: ‘If we relied on you, we’d get lost!’”

For five months Reginald flew regular missions from Full Sutton – and then the war ended.

Reg and Win married at St Stephen’s Church in Acomb in 1946, and by the time he was demobbed in 1947 Win was already pregnant with their first child, Freddy.

“Win was three months pregnant, so she didn’t want to go down south,” Mr Harman recalls. “So we settled here.”

Reg joined the railways, where he graduated from cleaner to fireman to engine driver. They lived in the same house in Askham Lane for 61 years.

Sadly, Winifred died earlier this year, aged 87. Freddy has also died – he passed away from leukaemia almost exactly four years ago.

But Mr Harman’s daughter, Brenda, lives nearby – and the one-time tail-end Charlie also has four grandchildren – Nicky, Garry, Wayne and Alistair – to keep him busy. There’s no rest for old war heros.