Sam Plant and Esther Rau’s love saw her smuggled out of a devastated Berlin at the end of the war to start a marriage which will be 60 years old tomorrow.

Sam, aged 82, and Esther, 80, of The Straits, Sedgley, met on August 15 1947 as Sam, of Tipton, was with the second battalion of the South Staffordshire regiment.

He went to a boating pool to see if he could hire a rowing boat and saw a German woman with a lovely smile.

They chatted, agreed to meet again the following day, and quickly fell in love, despite it being frowned upon for soldiers and locals to socialise.

With Sam’s regiment due to return home in the November, they decided to smuggle Esther out of the country hidden under army jackets on a train.

Russian soldiers searched the train but failed to find her and they finally got back to Britain where they lived with Sam’s parents in Ocker Hill. They married at St Marks’ Church, Ocker Hill, on March 20 1948 and settled in Sedgley to raise three children – Pamela, Shirley and Robert.

Sam worked in the drawing office at Geometric, Wednesbury, while Esther went to college to study teaching.

Esther went on to become deputy head at Tettenhall Wood Special School, Wolverhampton, while Sam also studied teaching at college and ended up teaching mathematics at the former Regis School, also in Tettenhall, for 20 years.

As members of Wolverhamptom Mountaineering Club, they have enjoyed walking the length and breadth of the country. In 1985, Sam raised £3,000 to buy a hydrotherapy pool for Esther’s school after walking from John O’Groats to Land’s End in 26 days with his wife driving a converted minibus for them to sleep in.

Sam said: “I had been performing at a military tattoo at the Olympic Stadium in Berlin in the morning and was a bit bored in the afternoon so I went down to the pool and saw Esther.

“She had such a lovely smile so I just went over and got talking even though fraternising with the local girls wasn’t encouraged by our superiors.

“Even though the army and military officials made it so difficult for us, I wanted to get married to her and managed to smuggle her out.”

Esther said: “I thought he was a nice looking fellow and was a bit of alright.

“We’ve always done everything together and been the best of friends and who would have thought that more than 60 years later it would have ended up like this.”

The pair celebrated their big day last Sunday with a meal with 30 family members and friends on-board the Severn Valley Railway.