WHEN the doorbell rang on the morning of Sid and Marie Maslin's diamond wedding anniversary little did they expect the best man they had not seen for almost 60 years to be standing on the doorstep.

The surprise, after years of searching for Oswald Morris, was the 'icing on the cake' at the Okehampton couple's day of celebration.

After training together as bomber pilots in world war two, Sid and Oswald's lives went in different directions and despite attempts to trace each other they never met up again — that was until neighbour Janet Voaden intervened with a little sleuthing!

A recent newspaper article on Oswald, who became Britain's most celebrated cinematographer, revealed he was alive and well and living in a village in Dorset.

Janet managed to get hold of his telephone number and a week before the wedding anniversary the whole surprise was arranged.

'It was my present to Sid and Marie, she said. 'They often talked about Ossie and I had seen all the wedding photos. Once I knew where he lived it was quite easy to find him.

'The difficult thing was keeping it all quiet and it was just wonderful to see Sid's face when he realised who it was standing at the door.'

For Sid, once he got over the shock it was like they had never been apart.

'I nearly fell through the floor,' he said. 'I had followed Ossie's career through the television and newspapers but he worked all over the world and was difficult to trace.

'Seeing him again was the icing on the cake and we never stopped talking all day

'We were great pals in the war but I had almost given up hope of ever finding him.'

The friends first met on a train to Scarborough in 1940 after they were conscripted and were together until they got their 'wings'.

'The first leave I had was not until March 1941 and Marie and I got married during that week at the Round Chapel in Clapton with Ossie as my best man.

'After we finished our training we got split up and when we were demobbed I tried to find him but he was out in Australia with Transport Command by then.'

While Oswald pursued a career in the film industry which brought him Ocar and Bafta success, Sid worked for the Marconi Wallis Telegraph Company in London before becoming a hospital administrator.

Oswald said it was 'marvellous' to meet up with his old friend again and they had spent a great deal of time reminiscing.

'When Janet asked if the name Sid Maslin meant anything to me, I remembered him immediately and the names of the other two chaps we shared a room with at the Crown Hotel in Scarborough,' he said.

'We were all thrown together in the war and the whole experience was very strange — I had never been above 8ft from the ground before, apart from on a ladder, and suddenly I was flying around in the sky.'

He said the casualty rate for bomber pilots during the war was three out of four so they were 'the lucky ones'.

'I did not know if Sid was still alive so it was just as much a shock to me when Janet rang me up,' he said. 'After all this time we were living only 100 miles from each other.'

Sid Maslin's son, Peter, said the surprise had been perfect: 'Celebrating 60 years of marriage and renewing contact with your best man at the same time — it could not be better.'