A COUPLE from Tanygroes and a well-known Aberporth woman are among those featuring in a documentary on Wales’s wartime generation on ITV Cymru Wales tomorrow evening.

‘Greatest Generation’, which will be broadcast at 9pm on Tuesday, meets veterans, some of whom have amazing stories of survival.

It also fondly documents feelings of growing old and what it is like to be approaching 100 years old and looking back on long lives.

For the last few years Age Cymru Dyfed, with the support of the Armed Forces Covenant Fund Trust, have been running a major project to record the memories of a group of remarkable people.

John and Adelaide Martin, of Tanygroes, are among the oldest surviving veterans of World War Two.

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Both served in the RAF - John as a bomber pilot and Adelaide as a mechanic ensuring aircraft were airworthy.

Now almost 100 years old they are among only a handful of couples in Britain who both served in the war.

The couple met at a wartime dance - and were to be married weeks after the war ended.

But their romance had almost ended before it had really begun, as John was shot down on only his third mission.

“We were just about ten minutes away from Berlin, which was the target, and that's when these cannon shells whipped through the aircraft past my arm,” he said.

John’s Lancaster bomber had been hit by fire from a German night-fighter aircraft and was quickly ablaze.

The flames were blocking John’s escape route.

“I really felt these were my last seconds, but, at that moment, the aircraft must have been blown to pieces and I can remember, you know, flying through the air.”

A dazed and terrified John managed to open his parachute and land safely, but was immediately taken prisoner. Adelaide learned somewhile later that he was safe.

In the meantime, Adelaide worked among an all-women team to repair and service aircraft.

The programme also features Mary Bott, of Aberporth, who recalls her time as a ‘Land Girl’ working on farms around Ceredigion and Dennis Tidswell, from Pembroke Dock, who witnessed not only the Battle of Britain but the heroic defence of Malta.

Many of the veterans’ stories can be found in Age Cymru Dyfed’s West Wales Veterans Archive, part of the People’s Collection Wales, in the National Library of Wales.

*Greatest Generation will be broadcast at 9pm on June 7 on ITV Cymru Wales.