Lives in Cricket No 1 - Allan Watkins

talk to her.’ ‘Oh yes you do,’ she said. I said ‘Why should I?’ And all this nonsense. She said, ‘Come on Albert, go and talk to her.’ So that was it – I never knew anybody else!” By the time Allan was at Devonport, Molly had been posted to Weston-super-Mare. Nearly three years into the war, the mood was one of great uncertainty. “We didn’t know at that time whether one of us might be killed, so we decided to get married.” It came as a shock to his mother when Allan announced his engagement, but the pair duly celebrated their wedding at St Mary’s, the Norman church in the centre of Usk, where both had been communicants. Allan remembers a naval friend, Rodney York, greeting them as they came down the path from the church. “Well, Watkins,” he said, “that’s one bloody knot you won’t be able to undo!” There was a brief honeymoon in London, where two of Allan’s sisters were now living. It was while they were in the capital that a photograph of the couple, both in uniform, was taken. For many years the little snap shot with a partially failed exposure was the only memento of their wedding that Allan and Molly possessed. To celebrate their parents’ diamond anniversary, the couple’s children arranged for the picture to be enlarged and An Easy War For Stoker Watkins 23 St Mary’s, Usk, where Allan and Molly were married The only photograph of the newly weds