Another coincidence has come back to my recollection, concerning two of my colleagues at Peckham Manor School, where I taught in the early 1960s. Both were about 12 years older than me, and had been army officers in the D-Day invasion of Normandy in 1943, one in the Royal Engineers, one in the Royal Artillery; and both had served with gallantry and efficiency such as to win each of them the award of the Military Cross. Exchanging recollections one day, they discovered that the Gunners officer had won his MC by resourcefully leading his company from a tight spot under fire across a temporary bridge which a platoon of Sappers had built shortly before, also under fire, to enable the escape of those withdrawing from this heavily outnumbered exchange, under the command of the RE officer - for which he had received his MC. But they had never met until they found themselves teaching in the same South London school about 17 or 18 years later.

~M~