watch Douglas and Roy interact, given that they lost touch with each other for more than half a century.

The gestures, the turns of phrase, the overwhelming compatibility, and above all the witty banter which constantly flows between them are not what one might expect to find in two men whose paths diverged 63 years ago, and who were only reunited just two weeks ago.

Yet, despite the different hands which life dealt them, their reunion has been a reaffirmation of the harmonious relationship they shared as youngsters.

Their story begins in Penzance, Cornwall where the two men, along with their siblings Sydney and Cathy, shared a difficult childhood and because of it were forced to grow up more quickly than many of their peers.

At the age of 14 Douglas entered the working world as an office messenger. At approximately the same age, Roy became a military cadet with a view to becoming a bandsman.

But the war clouds gathering over Europe would soon impact on both teenagers, pitching them into a world where boys become men overnight.

As the older of the two, Douglas knew in his bones that war was inevitable, and in 1938 he joined the Territorials -- Britain's `weekend army'.

Subsequently, he would be demobilised and remobilised before finally being dispatched to France with the British Expeditionary Force in December, 1939 -- barely three months after the Second World War was declared on September 3.

Outmoded weaponry from the First World War was the least of the soldiers' worries as Douglas and his comrades struggled against the bitter cold. For the next few months, they had little to do militarily until the so-called "static war'' suddenly ended and "everything blew up in our faces''.

Douglas Matcham was just 19 years old, and over the next six years he would experience the awfulness of war in a host of now-famous "hot spots'': Dunkirk, El Alamein, Algeria, Suez and Sicily among them.

Trapped in the great retreat of Allied forces from the beaches of Dunkirk, Douglas diced with death even as he awaited rescue. For as far as he could see, huge oil refineries burned furiously for days, filling the air with thick black smoke. The stifling smell of cordite from gunfire, the deadly German bullets ripping into the sand and human flesh, the cries of the wounded -- all would be the young Cornishman's lot as he waded into the sea. Beside him, a comrade in arms, barely five feet five inches tall, was kept from drowning as Douglas held the lad's head above water.

When the duo finally reached the safety of a waiting British destroyer, the Germans dropped a bomb down its funnel. While it failed to explode, it did pierce the ship's hull, necessitating immediate evacuation.

"I said to my dad when I got back to England, `I'm going to live to 70','' Douglas recalls of his lucky escape. "Now I've passed that mark I look upon every day as a bonus.'' Meanwhile brother Roy, at 17-and-a-half, had joined the regular army, where his aptitude for weapons earned him an assignment to a special training course, which he duly passed with flying colours. Endowed with the rank of Sergeant -- the youngest soldier to have it at the time -- to give him the appropriate authority, the teenager was posted to a manor house in Bedford to train RAF officers in the art of defending their bases.

It would include the first of several conflict-related scares he would experience.

"One bright, moonlit night I stood and watched a German aeroplane drop a landmine by parachute. The target was our barracks, but fortunately it landed in a nearby field, where it blew a 100 foot by 60 foot crater in the ground and shattered every piece of glass for miles around,'' Roy remembers. "It was at the same time the bomb was doing down the funnel of Doug's ship.'' Looking back on their mutual escapes, the brothers agree: "We were charmed.

We were meant to survive the war.'' In October 1943, Douglas went with the artillery force to El Alamein in North Africa as a driver/radio operator -- a posting which would earn him and his comrades the sobriquet Desert Rats, and the distinction of firing the first shots of the battle.

After what he describes as "the biggest bombardment ever mounted by the British Army'', and travelling the full length of North Africa, Douglas was among those who broke through to Algeria, from whence they went all the way back to Suez, and eventual redeployment to Sicily.

Meanwhile, Sgt. Roy arrived in Algiers on his first overseas posting, where he found miles of dockland filled with Allied tanks destined for Sicily.

Not for the first time, as the brothers have now discovered, their paths criss-crossed, but did not converge.

During his service in North Africa Roy successfully volunteered for the Police Force in Palestine, where political unrest was warming up. Sailing from Taranto, Italy on his 21st birthday, his journey to the Middle East included Egypt's Port Said, the Suez Canal and the Gaza strip -- points brother Douglas would also touch at almost the same time as he headed back to Suez en route to Sicily.

Roy's service in the Palestinian Police, which included anti-drug smuggling activities, had its share of danger and drama. Redeployed to Jerusalem after approximately 17 months in Janin, Hebron and Beersheba, he was given an armoured car and driver and charged with cruising the holy city in search of terrorists.

Fate decreed that he was on duty the night a gigantic explosion ripped through the famed King David Hotel -- an act of terrorism masterminded by Menachem Begin, later Prime Minister of Israel -- which took 78 lives.

Jerusalem had become a hotbed, and Roy was among many who received orders to pull out -- but not before he successfully sat the British Police sergeant's examination for his next posting: a choice of either Sarawak or Bermuda.

One of just ten men awarded a coveted Bermuda posting, Roy arrived here on the banana boat Bayano in December, 1949 to fulfil a three-year contract with the CID, following which he spent many years managing properties in the hotel industry, before moving into retail and finally opening his own shop, The Little Mermaid, on Chancery Lane.

Along the way, he had met and married Danish-born Else in 1954, and they raised two sons, Bridan and Peter, and are now the grandparents of four.

Douglas, on the other hand, had continued his military career, which included participating in the D-Day landings in Normandy, France and pushing on with the Allied forces through Germany, where he too became a post-war policeman in the British Army's Special Investigation Branch.

During a related, ten-week course in Britain Douglas met his future wife Mary, and they married in 1947. One year later he was demobilised and returned to Britain, where the couple lived until 1960 and had two sons and a daughter.

Like Roy, Douglas also left England to begin a new life in a Commonwealth country -- in his case, Adelaide, Australia, where he has remained. For the bulk of his career he was the office manager for the Hospital & Medical Benefits Association, while his wife -- a qualified mental health nurse -- preferred working in a well-known department store.

Brothers reunited Together, the couple raised their children, and now have six grandchildren.

Odd as it may seem today, having lost contact with his siblings at the outset of war, Douglas did not attempt to find them afterwards.

"When the war started you never thought about anything. You just went on and on,'' the bemedalled ex-soldier explains. "When you came back from the forces you had an outlook of only living for the day. The army was `home' as far as I was concerned because I hadn't been home in years.'' Indeed, Mrs. Matcham says it was several years into her marriage before she discovered her husband had no idea of his siblings' whereabouts.

"I found that very, very strange, because my family was very close,'' she remembers. "I heard the Salvation Army could find people, so I went to them here.'' Douglas picks up the story.

"I had a phone call one day, and a voice said: `Have you got two brothers, Sydney and Roy, and a sister Cathy?' I said `Yes,' and the voice said: `You're the fella we want then'.'' The Salvation Army had "got their man'', but 20 years would pass before the two brothers actually came face to face in Bermuda. In the meantime, they had each seen their sister Cathy in England, and the other brother, Sydney, visited Bermuda a year before his death.

As can be imagined, the duo spend countless happy hours catching up on their respective lives and adventures, and the affection they share is obvious, although Roy loves to joke: "I've had a perpetual nightmare that one day I would open the door and find him standing there.'' Unfortunately, ill health prevented Mary Matcham from accompanying her devoted husband, who will be 80 in August, on the long-awaited reunion, but she is never far from his thoughts.

For now, however, it is enough that the gap on 63 years has finally closed for the two grandfathers with a host of memories, photographs and quips to share.