CRESTVIEW — William and Kathleen Miller’s World War II romance began in an unlikely manner.
“He backed over her in a Jeep,” their daughter, Betsy Roy, said. “He went the wrong way around a roundabout in his Jeep and got confused, and backed up into people waiting for their bus and hit her.”
The then Kathleen Hannan was serving in the Royal Women’s Auxiliary Air Force; William was in the U.S. Army Air Force stationed in the English town of Desborough.
Kathleen began her military career as a barrage balloon tender, but soon transferred.
“I took mechanical training,” she said. “I worked mostly on Wellington bombers. They didn’t have an inline engine. They had a radial air-cooled engine. We got greasy and dirty! But the warrant officer said I was the best mechanic he ever had.”
William, meanwhile, kept tidy at his job as a staff sergeant.
“I was working in the hangar, crawling over aircraft in the cold and rain,” Kathleen said. “He sat behind a desk. He worked in the bomb storage site."
One day, she was leaving her home in the neighboring town of Market Harborough, hurrying across the roundabout to catch a bus to her aerodrome.
Still unfamiliar with England’s clockwise roundabouts, William entered the traffic circle and instinctively headed counter-clockwise.
“It was a bit foggy and misty, and I stepped off the curb to catch the bus to my work,” Kathleen said. “He came around the wrong way. People called at him to stop, so he started to back up and that’s when he hit me.”
She wasn’t injured, and William didn’t get into trouble with the local authorities, she said. “The police in that little town were pretty nice to the Americans,” she said. “It was one of those funny little things. A twist of fate, they called it.”
On Aug. 5, 1944, the couple were married.
At war’s end, Kathleen was released from service. William was shipped home with his unit. Kathleen soon followed, along with thousands of other war brides.
“I took the ship over here to America,” she said. “‘John Ericson,’ I recall the name well. There were a lot of girls on it. A lot of young women coming over.”
She settled down as an American housewife.
“It was a new experience for all of us, but people were nice on the whole,” she said.
William, who went into the U.S. Air Force Reserves, was called up during the Korean Conflict, serving stateside at Craig Air Force Base in Selma, Alabama, which primarily trained new pilots for the war.
He left the service following the Korean Conflict.
Both remember the May 9, 1945 announcement that WWII was over.
But wartime scarcity meant celebration was muted at their respective aerodromes.
“On the base, there wasn’t much jubilation,” Kathleen said. “In the little towns, things were scarce. Being in the service, at least you got fed. I’m not saying it was gourmet.”
As America and its allies observe Veterans Day today, Kathleen and William Miller also remember the war in which they each served and that brought them together.
“I still have my uniform but I can’t get in it, of course,” Kathleen said.
This article originally appeared on Crestview News Bulletin: Crestview veterans recount finding love during war
