Despite being separated by the war just three months after they married, Win and Stewart Bond celebrated 65 years of wedded bliss this week.

The couple, of Hill Corner Road, Chippenham, met as teenagers in Tavistock, near where Mr Bond, 85, was working in the dockyards.

They married on June 10, 1944, when Mrs Bond, now 83, was just 18.

Mrs Bond said: “I nearly didn’t have a wedding dress, but we were given clothing coupons and I found a dress which fitted, so I bought it.”

The couple, who have two children, four grandchildren and one great-granddaughter, missed out on a honeymoon.

Mrs Bond said: “We paid our deposit to go to Ilfracombe because we couldn’t afford to go any further, but no one was allowed to move because it was around D-Day, so we lost our deposit and we never went.”

Three months after their marriage Mr Bond was sent by the Royal Navy to Ceylon, now Sri Lanka, where he worked in the Naval store department.

Mrs Bond, 83, said: “Stew was sent away to war while I was pregnant with our first child. We wrote each other hundreds of letters every week, and when I gave birth I had to send a signal to him from the docks with the good news.”

Mr Bond added: “I didn’t want to go away but we had no choice – I was away for two years and the first time I saw our daughter Barbara, she was two and a half, but she took to me straight away.”

The couple moved to Corsham in 1971 when Mr Bond was promoted to Copenacre and lived in Brook Drive for several years, before moving to Chippenham where they become members of the Chippenham Wheelers when son Michael joined.

The couple, who are celebrating their anniversary at the weekend in Devon, put down their happiness to sheer luck.

Mrs Bond said: “I don’t have any advice for couples these days – all I can say is it is luck. Anything could happen along the way, but it’s luck we’ve come so far.”

Mr Bond added: “You have got to be willing to accept that each of you has got your own ideas – you are two different people. Everybody has arguments, there has to be arguments in a marriage.”