BYGONES reader Ken Brooks, from America, has sent us this story of a chance meeting by his uncles as they went off to serve in the Second World War WWII.

It was early in the war when the two brothers, from Darwen, were called up for service.

Harry Brooks had worked in the service department at Walpamur before moving to its York depot,; his older brother Frank worked as a flagger with Darwen Corporation and lived in Nicholas Street.

Along with their brothers Fred, George and Jack, and sisters Alice and Clarrie, they had grown up at The Bungalow in Earnsdale Road with their parents Ernest and Margaret Brooks.

Ernest, who had served in the Royal Engineers in the First World War WWI, was a builder. He built The Bungalow for his own family, plus several more houses in the Earnsdale area and a row of houses in Sunnyhurst Lane.

This row has a plaque mounted on it that says “Hurstwood Terrace. E B 1910”.

Harry was called up into the Navy and became an engine room mechanic;, Frank was called up into the Army and became a gunner signaller in the Royal Artillery.

After going through their basic training, they were told they were going overseas.

In those days they did not tell you where you were going or what ship you would sail on.

They didn’t know it, but they were both making their separate ways to Liverpool and the same troopship.

The ship, packed with thousands of men left Liverpool on May 21, 1942, and sailed around South Africa to Port Suez in Egypt.The portholes were clamped shut, there was little ventilation and no air conditioning and they crossed the equator twice. The chances of meeting an acquaintance must have been near zero, but Harry later wrote to his parents that he had bumped into his brother on deck.

He said: “ I wanted a light for my cigarette, asked a soldier – and it was Frank!”

Harry was to be stationed in HMS Stag, a shore base Navy facility. He returned home to York after the war, where he lived with his wife Alice, nee Shaw, from Lower Darwen and his young son Michael.

Frank and his unit were sent into Iraq to defend a vital aid supply route to Russia through the port of Basra and to provide a defence of the Iraqi oilfields in case the Germans advanced down the Caucasus.

They never arrived, so Frank’s unit was then shipped to India to face the Japanese – they trained and were re-equipped for jungle warfare and became the 28th Jungle Field Regiment.

Late in 1943 his Division was shipped to Burma and were involved in heavy fighting, in bad conditions, for three months, but eventually inflicted the first major defeat on their enemy.

However, the Japanese had amassed 100,000 crack troops to push into Nnorthern India and they were approaching the keys towns of Imphal and Kohima.

It was decided to transport the whole 5th Indian Division, which included Frank’s unit, by air as reinforcements.This had never been done before and none of the troops had been trained for it. Most had probably never even been on a plane.

The army borrowed 25 American transport planes, which were loaded with 15,000 troops plus their mules, guns and Jeeps.

The division went from action on one battlefront to another one hundreds of miles away in just four days, but they turned the tide of battle.

In the next six months the men endured miles of jungle, mountains, swollen rivers, monsoon rains, snakes, insects, humid heat and disease - the artillery men had to haul the 1600 pound guns through it all.

Sadly, as the enemy retreated further, Frank became very sick and died several days later from typhus.

His division had fought the enemy for 11 months without a break and just three weeks after his death it was pulled out to for be rested and regroup.

Frank is buried at Imphal War Cemetery in India.