General Chat

Poignant moment as ashes scattered


Memorial on an oak tree close to the former RAF Coltishall for James Metcalf and his wife Iris Metcalf.
RICHARD BATSON
14 December 2009 17:04



The final chapter of a wartime romance will be written tomorrow when the ashes of a Norfolk woman are scattered in a tree overlooking an old airfield.

Young land worker Iris Fisher met Jim Metcalf, an engineer who checked the planes at RAF Coltishall, at a village hall dance.

After work she would cycle the five miles from her Dilham home to their romantic rendezvous at an oak tree, within sight of the airfield, and wait to meet Jim.

They married in July 1945 at North Walsham. Jim went on to be a painter and decorator and later a boatyard maintenance man. Iris was a proud housewife and mother of two.

The couple also brought up, from the age of two, their grandson Michael Butterfield - who soon became aware of the significance of the tree to the couple, when they told him tales of how they met there, and how it was where they wanted to be.

When Jim died aged 82 in 2002 Michael scattered his ashes there and put up their wedding photograph with a plaque bearing their names, service numbers and a short love poem based on a country music song, Just Beyond the Moon by Tex Ritter, in which a man dies and waits for his sweetheart.

Iris died last month, also 82, and Michael, a reservist Paratrooper who was the only survivor when a roadside bomb blew up his patrol's LandRover in Afghanistan, killing his three colleagues, will this week scatter her ashes there too in a simple ceremony.

He said it would be a poignant moment, adding: “I often go and sit at their tree and play CDs of the big band music, like Glenn Miller, that grandfather loved.

“This is where they met and now things have gone full circle and they will be reunited.”

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