WOIPPY (France), Jan 30: Fifty-seven years after being separated by war, oceans and the twists and turns of fate, a former soldier in the German army and his one-time French sweetheart have finally tied the knot.

“When we found each other again in April 2001 we talked for a long time and we realised that emotions never die. We decided to wed just like we promised,” Betty Christen said on Wednesday.

She met her husband, Friedrich, in 1943 when he, then an Austrian serving in the Wehrmacht, was posted to the Moselle region of occupied France. The two, both aged 19, swore in a Luxembourg chapel that one day they would marry.

But in 1944 Friedrich was captured and sent to Britain and then the United States as a prisoner of war. By the time he was freed in 1946, Betty had married someone else and he had no choice but to return to Austria.

Betty did not forget him, though. After the death of her husband and several years living alone, she tried to locate her long lost sweetheart.

“My grandson found him, thanks to the Internet,” she said.

The reunion was at Vienna airport. Freidrich turned up “carrying white roses for the 19-year-old and a bouquet of red roses for the 74-year-old woman I had become,” Betty said, her eyes alight with emotion.

The two were married in December and now live in the French countryside, in Woippy, Friedrich leaving behind his upmarket Vienna suburb and Betty introducing him to his new family of a dozen great-grandchildren.—AFP