World War II veteran turns 104
By Judy Evans
@JudyEv (383809)
Rockingham, Australia
July 3, 2026 1:58am CST
A good-news story appeared today on my news feed.
Brian Walley was born in 1922 in Cheshire and enlisted in the Royal Air Force a day before his 18th birthday. At 19, during World War II, his bomber was shot down and plunged into the freezing North Sea. After drifting for two days, he was rescued, almost dead, by German soldiers and spent the next three years in a prison camp.
When he returned from the war, he married in England. The couple emigrated to Western Australia in 1976 and eventually settled in Margaret River. The couple had five children and 76 years of marriage before his wife, Mair, died aged 98. Brian celebrated his 104th birthday recently with one of his children travelling from South America to be with him on his birthday.
Brian is one of the last surviving veterans of World War II. Wouldn’t it be nice if he had a few more good years?
The photo was taken at Nungarin War Museum.
15 people like this
12 responses
@garymarsh6 (24240)
• United Kingdom
7h
Congratulations to him. Imagine both living & being married for so long. Sadly year by year the old veterans are becoming less & less!
1 person likes this
@rebelann (117488)
• El Paso, Texas
2h
I hope he has more good years to live.
It's uncommon for WWII veterans to live very long, my dad passed at 59 and in the hospital ward he was in there were at least a dozen others also about to pass.
@sissy15 (13031)
• United States
9h
Such a long time to live for someone who has probably been through so much. His wife lived a fairly long life, too. It's always interesting to hear the stories of people who lived back then, a lot of them love telling their stories, but not everyone loves listening. I'd love to sit down and talk to someone that age about their life. I have an uncle who is in his 90s, but I don't get to talk to him much. He was in one of the wars and was stationed in Japan. I found out recently he had a daughter with a Japanese woman, but we don't know what happened to her. He didn't talk about her much because of my aunt, whom he married when he came back, but I always wished I could find his daughter for him. I know next to nothing about her, and it's harder to find records in other countries. It's so interesting, the kinds of stories the people of that age could tell if people would just listen. I hope that with whatever time he has left, he gets to enjoy it.
