sudden fear and uncertainty.

Ghastly thoughts crowded Nick Martynow's mind as he felt the need once again to protect ten-year-old Alex.

"I will not go back to Russia!'' he screamed out in the corridor of the children's centre in post-war Germany.

Like so many Second World War children, the pair had already endured a lifetime of suffering: It had bonded them in a way which went deeper than brotherly love.

Driven from the Ukraine and dumped in a German forced labour camp eight years earlier, they had suffered the anguish of their mother's death, run the gauntlet of bombs, and been shifted like excess baggage from foster parents to children's centres.

Now, as Nick cried out to the Russian orthodox priest, they feared being uprooted again.

It turned out to be a false alarm; not so shortly afterwards in the summer of 1951.

On this occasion, they knew their four years of finding in Germany's Badabling children's centre near Munich -- spartan as it was -- a place to learn, play, be happy, and grow up in peace, was finally over.

More than that, it meant leaving behind the pretty, young International Relief Organisation worker from Bermuda, Joan Aitken, who had looked after and cared for them over those years.

For who could doubt the deep impression Miss Aitken had made on them? In fact, she had become the mother they never really had.

While it was true the two Ukrainian orphans had been told they were sailing to a new life in America, distrust and fear were rife in those post-War days.

As Nick, distinctive by his shock of white-blond hair, looked at Alex, he sensed the worst: They were being shipped back to Russia.

It was only when the Statue of Liberty appeared on the horizon in all its symbolic glory did the brothers really believe a new dawn had broken.

The years ahead fulfilled those hopes.

Raised by foster parents, they quickly flourished in their hard won freedom, taking up successful careers, and bringing up families of their own; In short, they became like any other well-adjusted American citizens.

But the missing gaps in their lives, like a naggingly unfinished jigsaw, haunted them.

What had befallen their father, brother and sister back in Germany? And what had happened to the woman from Bermuda? The questions remained unanswered for 42 years, until an incredible piece of detective work by Mrs. Joan Metcalfe (nee Aitken) led to a highly-charged reunion between the three last summer in the States.

And recently the trio wrote another chapter for their remarkable tale.

Nick, Alex, now aged 56 and 53, and their wives, Marilyn and Eulah, came to Bermuda to visit Mrs. Metcalfe for a holiday ... to play a little golf, do some sightseeing and, of course, to reminisce.

For the brothers, flying to the Island fulfilled a dream started in Badabling.

"I always thought I would love to come to Bermuda, because I knew at Badabling Joan had come from there. It's just wonderful now being here,'' Nick, by far the more talkative of the two, told The Royal Gazette .

For Mrs. Metcalfe the feeling could not be adequately expressed in words.

"It's just a miracle, just a miracle,'' she exclaimed, shrugging her shoulders.

Even as they chatted among themselves at Mrs. Metcalfe's Devonshire home, often breaking out into laughter, and, yes, on the rare moment striking a sadder tone, yet more of the missing jigsaw pieces began to slot into place; memories came flooding back in unexpected bursts.

"Do you remember how, in 1950, you made a Christmas Day radio broadcast on the BBC, sending out a message to all the children of the world? I can still hear your little voice,'' said Mrs. Metcalfe to Nick.

Sometimes the recollection was a little hazy. Was it 1947 or 1948 they met at Badabling? Mostly, however, the post-War years they shared were something they could never forget, and the memories burned as fiercely as ever.

And what had certainly not dimmed a whit over 40 odd years was the feeling the brothers still had for Mrs. Metcalfe.

"We call her mum. We've always called her mum. She is just a beautiful lady,'' smiled Nick.

As they spoke and brought each other up to date with their lives, a strange thought suddenly crossed the minds of all three.

It dawned on them that several times over the last few decades they had been in the same country without realising it! For Nick and Alex, their side of the story really began in 1943.

It started in a cruel, brutal and typically shambolic way, when they and their parents, older sister and infant brother were rounded up like cattle, taken from their Ukraine home, and driven to Germany.

Nick was five, his brother two as they endured the upheaval.

"It took several days without food and water,'' recalled Nick in a matter-of-fact way of that fateful journey.

Once in Germany they were placed in forced labour camps, their parents working in factories, which usually meant preparing ammunition.

"We lived in these barracks, which were unheated. There was little food and many people died of starvation. Most of the Jews, of course, were exterminated,'' explained Nick.

In 1944, the Germans abandoned forced labour camps, and with their mother dead, and having lost touch with their father, the brothers went to stay with different foster parents in Neudorf.

Nick lived with Mrs. Heilig and her children, while Alex stayed with the Ziegels, who owned five to six acres of land and a herd of cows.

Their homes were near an industrial estate, which became a target for regular bombing raids in the latter stages of the war.

"Both of us witnessed a tremendous amount of bombing,'' recalled Nick.

The pair were eventually found by a child search team organised by the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRA), a forerunner to the IRO.

As Mrs. Metcalfe explained: "UNRA's job was to collect these people in the camps, register and identify them, and look out for their care and maintenance and repatriation. UNRA started the child search programme.'' Nick recalls him and Alex being picked up in an American jeep and taken to the Glasterhausten children's centre, near Heidelberg, which was opened in 1945-6.

They stayed in these converted military barracks several months, changing their name to avoid being returned to Russia, before moving to Prien in Bavaria.

Their next destination was Badabling, a former Luftwaffe air base.

It was there that Mrs. Metcalfe -- then Miss Aitken -- was assigned to them as their case worker. She was just 25.

Mrs. Metcalfe, studying medicine in Canada, had read about UNRA's efforts in taking care of displaced children and realised this was the kind of work she wanted to do.

"I gave up medicine and took a course in social work in Montreal.'' After going to the British Consul in New York and volunteering to work overseas, she went to London, getting a job with a children's agency in London.

Through her Bermuda connections, she joined the Guide International Service, and when UNRA opened an office in London, Miss Aitken, then 23, presented herself for employment.

There followed a variety of assignments -- including two weeks of training in Holland during the coldest winter she could recall -- before she finally went to Badabling with the IRO.

The centre was far from luxurious, and the food a little plain and none too plentiful, but it became a very happy temporary home for the brothers, where they mixed with Russian orthodox priests and Jews.

Mrs. Metcalfe remembered how the pair threw themselves into sports.

"They were both great athletes,'' she said, looking at them both and adding: "None of them has really changed that much.'' Alex reckoned case workers had a caseload of about 60 children each. Some 1,500 youngsters were cared for at the centre, 400 at a time, he added.

"Its capacity was actually 450,'' Mrs. Metcalfe chipped in.

As she spoke another memory hit Nick.

"I remember how we were always being quarantined. Every time somebody sneezed there was a quarantine. People had all kinds of illnesses there, from measles to whooping cough.'' Nick paused as something else struck him.

"I remember people were taught trades there. I was taught shoe making, and could well have become a shoe maker.'' And what are their memories of Miss Aitken? The pair recall how she once "sneaked'' them out of Germany for a weekend skiing trip in Austria.

Said Nick: "She was a wonderful helper for all the children and was very persistent.'' It was this persistence, applying pressure to the right authorities, which finally won the brothers their passage to America.

And in June or July of 1951 -- they can't remember the precise date -- the two sailed to New York.

"It was only when we saw the Statue of Liberty we really believed we were safe,'' said Alex.

The last Mrs. Metcalfe heard of them was a letter from Nick in New York, saying he was going to Nebraska, where the pair had been found foster parents in a "delightful'' couple, Milton and Ella Gangwish.

No easy task, since the brothers had been considered too old for adoption, and too young to be useful at work.

Speaking very little English, but just enough to get by, they found school difficult at first.

But remarkably quickly they pulled themselves up through the grade levels, finally catching up with children of their age.

Nick went on to college at Kansas, graduating in math and developing a talent for computer work. He now has three children.

Alex graduated from Nebraska, served in the Army two years, and now works in a turf business. He has three daughters.

Adopting Gangwish as their surnames, both became American citizens -- speaking to them now it is hard to detect the Russian in their accents -- and while remaining close emotionally, were physically separated by their different lives.

Last summer's meeting with Mrs. Metcalfe, who lives with her husband in Ireland but still comes regularly to Bermuda, was matched by an equally memorable reunion of sorts.

This time it was Eulah Gangwish who turned detective, tracking down the brothers' sister, Ljuba, and brother, Mitzi, who had endured the journey with them all those years ago from Ukraine to Germany.

And it culminated last year in an emotional Christmas Day telephone call to 63-year-old Ljuba in Moscow.

She told them how she had worked 41 years in a factory, and that Mitzi had gone to Siberia. Sadly, they have still to speak to him.

The brothers also discovered their father, Michelle, had died in 1975. He never reestablished contact with his children.

After Bermuda, what next for Nick, Alex and Mrs. Metcalfe? Well, the three may, just may, be embarking on another chapter in their story.

The brothers are planning to go to Moscow in July to do some further exploration of their roots.

And by incredible coincidence, it happens Mrs. Metcalfe is also going there -- although at a different time.

"We are hoping, somehow, we can meet up. It would be just wonderful if we could,'' said Nick.