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DIAMOND COUPLE: Len and Ursula DIckinson today

She was a young German nurse sent in by the Red Cross to tend to the sick and the dying.

He was a soldier from East Lancashire, part of the Allied forces overseeing the liberation of one of the most infamous concentration camps of the Second World War.

But among the horror of Bergen-Belsen, Ursula and Len Dickinson discovered each other.

Their first date was when Len asked Ursula if she'd like to go for a walk.

They maried in Germany in 1947 before returning to Len's home town in Accrington.

Now the couple speak of their remarkable story for the first time.

LOVE blossoms in the strangest of places but none more so than at one of the most infamous Nazi concentration camps.

Between 1943 and 1945 an estimated 50,000 people died at Bergen-Belsen in Lower Saxony When the camp was liberated, shocked British troops discovered thousands of prisoners close to death.

A portrait taken after they moved to England from their work with the survivors of Belsen

German-born Ursula Dickinson was among the first nurses through the doors of the camp, sent by the German Red Cross.

Little did she know that this terrible place would be the start of a romance which has lasted over 60 years and which is still going strong today.

For among the horror, Ursula met a young soldier from East Lancashire who would become her husband and his home town of Accrington would soon be her new home.

Anne Frank, the Jewish girl whose name became famous when her diaries were discovered after the war died at Belsen, and was just one of the many Ursula and her colleagues could not get to in time.

During the initial period of her three years at the concentration camp, Ursula nursed scores of inmates suffering from Typhus or starvation.

Ursula, now 83, recalled: "I was working at a German hospital when we received a message that we had to pack our things and leave.

"We were needed at a horrible camp that the British had found.

"We had no idea what to expect when we arrived. It was grim, very grim.

"I cared for rooms full of patients who were nothing but skin and bone.

"They'd all had their heads shaved so I could barely tell which were men and which women. But we got used to it.

"As time went on and inmates started to get better, the British soldiers were allowed to speak to us.

"We started having a dance every week at one of the army bases in Belsen next to the concentration camp. There was this one man, a fat sergeant.

"He was always after me - by then I was a cook for the lads and I knew most of them.

"One night when he was trying it on and Len stepped in." she smiled.

"He was a stranger then, he was the man in charge of the coal delivery.

"But he could see that I didn't want this and he came over and walked me home.

"The next day he came over and asked me if I wanted to go for a walk that evening.

"Then bit by bit we became closer. And in 1946 just before Christmas Len went home on leave and while he was there he got me an engagement ring and proposed when he returned.

Ursula continued: "He still jokes to this day that when he went home he had some money and he had to decide whether to buy an engagement ring or a gramophone, and he says maybe he should have got the gramophone because he could have shut that up!"

The couple were married on December 20, 1947, but their wedding wasn't anything like the glamorous affairs we see today.

"At times during the war I didn't even know where my parents were as they had fled from the Russians.

"But we were in contact and they were able to come to wedding.

"They had no clothes so I gave them some of mine and my brother had some trousers made from an old army blanket." Ursula remembered.

"My wedding dress was made from some parachute silk, my veil was borrowed and a lady at the camp made my headdress with some wild cranberries picked from under the snow that had fallen that week.

"I had no flowers and I wore black shoes. We were married by an army priest at a church in nearby Celle, an army van took me.

"Our reception was back at Belsen where we stayed up drinking," she laughed, "until four o'clock in the morning.

"We got no presents., only bits of paper for cards."

She went on: "One lady gave me the silver bracelet from her wrist, that I still have today.

"People would laugh at us now but it was the best day."

Len was serving his national service, as a tank driver, and when his time in Germany came to an end the couple decided to make their way to England.

But Ursula spoke no English, until then they had communicated in German, which Len had become fluent in during his time in the country.

The young pair, both then just 23, travelled back to Accrington and lived at first with Len's parents.

Len went back to his job as a truck driver and Ursula spent days at home with Len's family not being able to speak to them before finally herself getting a job at engineering firm, Mullards, in Simonstone.

Ursula added: "I was terrified when we first came to England.

"I couldn't talk to anyone.

"I admit I cried a lot at first. The girls would laugh at me when I said something stupid when I was trying to learn English.

"Once I said I had a corn in my eye, meaning a sty and they fell about laughing.

"But the people on the whole in Lancashire were very very good to me.

"They were kind. I made lots of friends at work and elsewhere."

The couple moved to Haslingden, and then to their current home in Helmshore, where they had their two sons Paul and Peter and three grandchildren Oliver, Matthew, and the late Luke, followed.

All the family have been back to Germany to see where Ursula and Len met all those years earlier.

Len, now 83 said: "The children loved hearing about the past and the war, and when and where we met.

"We have been back 40 times and more to see Ursula's family and several times to Belsen. It's special to us, if also very sad for many.

"They were hard times but it turned out well and we have had a very good life and a very long one together."

The couple are heading back to Germany later this year to celebrate their diamond wedding anniversary but they have made their last trip to Belsen.

It now, they said, belongs in their past.

12:57pm Tuesday 24th June 2008

ON DUTY: Ursula as a nurse at Belsen in 1947

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