Bachelors!

I've just scanned this photo, unearthed in our unpacking and organisation of a new home.  It's a small square print that I've managed to increase in size through the scanning process.

My father (right) is with his chums as a bachelor in around 1951/2, in Chittagong,  He had met my mother in Baghdad and fallen in love with her, but told her that she needed to meet more men (!) before they committed to marriage.  She went off to nursing training in London, with UCH, while he was posted to Chittagong.  They were married, in Baghdad, in 1953.

I rather think that it was more to do with his job, that he wasn't allowed to marry within the first five years of work for the Eastern Bank, and that he had to do his time as a bachelor before marrying.  The bachelors lived in a Mess and must have had a whale of a time.

And both would have been saddened to hear of the death of the Duke of Edinburgh: the Queen must be desolated.