WAR widows came to see Bournemouth’s mayor – and discovered his own mother could have joined them.

A dozen members of the Dorset branch were invited to the town hall to mark the 40th birthday of the War Widows Association.

Mayor Cllr Christopher Rochester told them his own father, a searchlight soldier, was killed four months after he was born, near Nijmegen in Holland during World War II.

His mother moved the family into Bournemouth War Memorial Homes and he has twice been over to see the grave. “The older I get, the more I miss not knowing him,” said the mayor.

The Dorset branch of the association has around 150 members and there are 4,000 nationally.

Member Isabella Oakton, 89, from Winton, married her husband’s brother after he was killed on a Motor Torpedo Boar near Walcheren Island in Holland.

She said of the group: “I enjoy the companionship. You just know you are not alone and you can share things if you know somebody has been through the same experience.”

Sylvia Chambers, 82, of The Lansdowne, said her husband Ralph lost a leg at Monte Cassino in Italy during the Second World War, and then died seven years ago.

She said: “We get together for meetings, people come and speak to us, and we go out sometimes by coach.”

Regional organiser Ros Dillon, 65, from Queens Park in Bournemouth, said campaigns include higher pensions for the over 90s and specialist coroners for military inquests.