British war brides, 60 years later
Earl Evleth
of Grunge.
******
Here Came The War Brides
60 Years Ago, a Vast Wave of British Women Followed Their New Loves to a New
Land
By Tamara Jones
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, February 12, 2006; D01
Vera is certain even now that it began with the red dress. London in the
waning months of World War II was unbearably dark and dreary. Vera Cracknell
was just 18, and sick of the anti-barrage balloons that blotted out the sun,
sick of carrying the smelly rubber gas mask wherever she went. One day, a
flash of color brought her to a halt outside a downtown shop window. Vera
remembers her older sister shaking her head.
"You can't buy that! It would take all your coupons!"
The dress had tiny brass rivets and a twirly skirt. Vera was a junior
hostess at an American Red Cross club behind Harrod's. Dancing with the
flirtatious GIs let her forget the screaming bombers and deafening ack-ack
guns. She handed over her entire year's worth of clothing rations and took
the red dress home.
When she wore it for the first time, an American sergeant followed her into
the club and asked her to dance. In the sunroom of his Leisure World condo
near Leesburg, Charles Long recalls the moment with tender conviction: "It
was love at first sight, absolutely." With her raven hair, porcelain skin
and eyes the pale green of sea glass, Vera toyed with her share of suitors,
but Charles persevered even after she stood him up on their first date.
They married when the war ended, and Vera soon found herself crossing the
Atlantic aboard the Queen Mary, the famed luxury liner winding down her war
service as part of an amazing armada carrying some 70,000 young British war
brides and their babies.
It was 60 years ago this month that the first ship arrived in New York
Harbor, launching what was officially known as the War Brides Operation.
Over the next five months, 20 converted war ships would be in perpetual
motion across the Atlantic, a floating procession of brides. Some 200
reporters and newsreel cameras greeted the first "petticoat pilgrims," as
the British media had dubbed them. A special act of Congress had waived
immigration quotas for the war brides, and they claimed a unique place in
the country's social fabric -- a mass influx of foreigners drawn here not by
need but by love. Across America the women scattered, becoming Iowa
farmwives who grew "tomahtoes" or overly polite New Yorkers who muttered "oy
vey" with British accents. They rode trolleys through the streets of
Washington and plied swamp boats through the backwaters of Mississippi.
They slipped quietly into their new lives, and were quickly forgotten.
Precious Cargo
Love isn't like that anymore, is what Joan Stubbs will tell you if you ask
her. "Today people stand up in front of the altar and pledge their lives and
don't mean it," she laments from the house her husband built her in
Gloucester, Va. She married her Walter when she was just 17. He was one of
the Army Air Corps boys who played cards each night in the village cafe; she
was the air-raid warden's daughter who would come remind them to draw the
blackout curtains. Sometimes Walter would walk her home in the moonlight.
"He liked to talk," she remembers, "and I liked to listen."
War had already torn a gaping hole in Joan's childhood. She and her older
sister were among thousands of schoolchildren evacuated from the capital
when the London Blitz began, sent to the countryside to live with strangers.
Joan was 11. The besieged capital was 30 miles away, she guesses, and "at
night you could see London burning." When Joan was 14, her father came to
collect her -- their house had been destroyed in a direct hit, and now her
parents were fleeing the city as well. They all moved to a one-lane village
called Bourne End, near the aerodrome where B-17s took off. Walter Stubbs
belonged to the regiment known as Fame's Favored Few.
Joan was aboard that first love boat to America. She remembers the Argentina
setting sail without fanfare. "We weren't allowed to have anyone see us
off," she says. Families had to bid their daughters farewell at the train
station. The girls then reported to processing camps, where there were
mountains of forms to fill out in triplicate, thick stacks of documents to
read and humiliating physicals to endure, standing naked before Army doctors
who scanned their bodies with flashlights.
The U.S. military bore the cost of transportation, but the Red Cross budget
to staff and supply the operation was $100,000. At the processing camps,
cradles were made out of orange crates, while 20 war vessels were stocked
with pureed peas, talcum powder and safety pins. Babies had to be at least 3
months old to travel, and women could not be more than seven months
pregnant. Joan met a woman who slipped on the deck and would have lost her
daughter overboard if a passing steward hadn't caught the infant. Thirteen
babies who sailed from Belgium with their mothers aboard the Zebulon Vance
were reported dead after an outbreak of diarrhea.
Sometimes the stress of waiting for passage from war-torn Europe pushed the
brides to the breaking point. When 87 women expecting to ship out of Germany
discovered there was space for only 10, bedlam erupted at the processing
camp.
"Elephants on a rampage never trumpeted louder," the Red Cross staff
reported back to national headquarters. "Books were swept off shelves,
tables and chairs overturned. Crockery ornaments were hurled to the floor.
Coca cola bottles smashed against the fireplace. In short, an atomic bomb
could not have caused more chaos. The post physician was called to attend to
three hysterical women, and the MPs came in to stop the flying bric-a-brac."
British troops returning from years of combat would heckle and jeer at the
women from the decks of their ships docking in Southampton as the brides set
sail. The well-supplied American soldiers already were scorned in a popular
slogan for being "oversexed, overpaid and over here." Now they were
plundering the population of would-be English wives.
Joan Stubbs was oblivious to any controversy. "I think I was too young to
realize the impact of what I was doing," she reflects.
Covered in ice from an overnight storm, the Argentina entered New York
Harbor at 2:30 that February morning. Joan remembers the brides all rushing
to the deck, shivering in the bitter wind to catch the first glimpse of
their new homeland. "Can you imagine after four years of darkness what it
was like to see the Statue of Liberty all lit up for us?" Joan's voice
cracks at the memory. "It was such a beautiful sight."
Walter was waiting for her in Virginia, where they would be living with his
parents. She called him from the Norfolk train station. He was shocked to
find her in the baggage room, sitting on the "colored" bench. Segregation
was an alien concept to her.
The teen bride is 78 now. She lost Walter two years ago this April. Their
two children, and even the grandchildren, are grown and gone. Now a
great-grandchild is on the way. "I'm kind of alone here," says Joan. She
feels him beside her still, in the pool where he swam 12 laps a day, or when
she discovers an old birthday card tucked inside a book, or when she
misplaces something and hears herself ask, 'Well, Walter, where is it?' and
then it always turns up. He is the only man she ever loved.
"Who would think all this would come out of war?" she wonders.
A British Sisterhood
The stereo is blaring "Yes, We Have No Bananas," and the septuagenarians are
out of control. They dance a conga line through the hostess's living room, a
Carmen Miranda in silver lamé kicking up her heels with the Groucho Marx
surgeon who keeps squirting people in the face with water from his
gag-syringe. Something that sounds like china crashes to the floor. "There's
trifle!" the hostess carols, hoping to herd some of the revelers into the
dining room, where the table offers potluck testimony to English culinary
arts involving unset Jell-O and Matterhorns of whipped cream.
The annual Guy Fawkes Day costume party in November -- commemorating a
foiled plot to burn the British Parliament -- is a rip-roaring success. The
war brides beam. The small clubs they formed out of newlywed loneliness
became cultural touchstones polished smooth over the decades. They hold
garden parties each June to celebrate the queen's birthday. They fly the
Union Jack on British holidays.
The Transatlantic Brides and Parents Association began even before the last
war bride ship had left England back in 1946, formed by families who
despaired that they would never see their daughters again. The young women
came largely from working-class homes, and travel was prohibitively
expensive. Telephones were rare and overseas calls exorbitant.
As the association grew ever larger, a heartsick father had an idea: The
families could charter flights to the States. The parents' networking in
turn connected the lonely brides to one another, and social clubs began
popping up across the United States.
When Doris Amspaugh put a notice in her community paper asking if there were
any other British war brides in Vienna who wanted to get together for a
proper cup of tea, she was surprised when a dozen women responded. Vera Long
was among them. Hearing everyone else's stories over the years piqued Vera's
curiosity so much that she wrote a history project about the brides while
studying at George Mason University, and turned it into a book a few years
ago. Tentative fingers gently brush each young face when the women gaze at
the old pictures Vera collected.
There's Patricia, didn't she look just like Ingrid Bergman? She's dead, and
this couple here, the husband is dead and Eunice moved closer to her
daughter out West. There's Jack and Doris on their honeymoon. That's
Margaret; she's here but has dementia, and here's Annie the Scottish girl;
she died this past year.
They cross winter's seas together still. Baby showers have given way to
funerals, love letters have become eulogies.
No one kept any statistics on how many of the marriages lasted, though
Vera's research led her to hypothesize that the divorce rate was around 8
percent. The number who stayed in unhappy marriages would never be known.
Return passage to England was funded by the government for only one year
after arrival, and for mothers whose children were American citizens, going
home could mean losing custody in a U.S. divorce. Some women got off the
bride ships only to discover that their GI husbands were already married.
Others found themselves isolated in rural areas, London birds recast as
prairie wives in the Dakotas, or married no longer to a dashing soldier but
to a trapper living in a backwoods cabin with no running water or
electricity.
"I think people were tougher then and you accepted what you had," says
Doris. She remembers how the stress of adapting made her hair fall out in
clumps for the first two years here. Only a handful of actual war brides
remain in her club, but the tea party grew to 50 at one point, and has since
expanded to include postwar couples, homesick nannies and British expats in
perpetual search of a decent trifle.
Doris's husband, Jack, converted their Vienna basement into a faux English
pub where they threw parties. "But after Jack died, I didn't much like
coming down here alone," Doris says. She is 86 now. Jack's been gone nearly
20 years. The mahogany four-poster he bought for her arrival still stands
polished in their bedroom.
Those whose wartime romances did endure describe love not as a complicated
mystery but as a simple truth.
Charles never proposed properly, Vera reveals over Yorkshire tea and
digestive biscuits in her dining room. Charles sips guiltily from his china
cup. He thought sending her cheery instructions to fill out the seven-page
application required by the Army made his intentions clear enough.
"What cheek!" Vera declares.
What about that first date? Charles counters. They were supposed to meet at
Marble Arch, and Vera never showed. "As I got ready to go, this other
American who was always bringing things brought this huge case of strawberry
preserves," she explains.
"Remember, I brought you lemon drops," Charles counters plaintively.
"You brought me lemon drops, yes."
Charles was working with military intelligence to break the Germans' famed
Enigma code. Cracking the code of romance proved tougher. Transferred to
Paris to work on Russian encryptions when the war ended, Charles returned to
England for his wedding bearing a box of cigars instead of champagne.
"He said it was easier to carry," Vera says.
"Honey, now you behave," Charles replies mildly. "She never forgave me. At
the time, we were given free champagne or cognac in Germany after the war. I
thought it was pretty noble because I had to pay for the cigars."
Vera remembers there was also a bottle of French perfume, which she saved,
only to drop it on the floor of her cabin in her excitement to get ready to
walk down the Queen Mary gangplank and into Charles's arms. She quickly
shared the leaking perfume with the other giddy brides, and a cloud of
Chanel No. 5 followed them into America.
Settling into a rented room with a shared bath on 18th Street NE, Charles
embarked on a career as a pioneer who would help usher the CIA into the
computer era. Vera worked as a secretary until she became pregnant the
following year with the first of their two children. Washington left her
both dazzled and dejected. "I was annoyed that everything was perfect. It
was such a shock to me to see everything so white, shiny and beautiful."
Save for the scarcity of housing, America bore no mark from the war that had
caused her such hardship. Vera hadn't seen bananas in so long that she made
an entire dinner out of them for Charles's bemused sister.
They threw a big party for their 60th anniversary last fall. A tea dance, of
course. Charles gave Vera a diamond eternity ring.
They still love to play the music from those days, that war, their time.
Vera turns 80 next month, but the four different British organizations she
now belongs to keep her busy, and her exercise classes keep her fit. She
worries, though, about Charles. He is 87, and having some trouble getting
around. She puts Glenn Miller on to coax him away from his computer.
"Come on, come on, come on," Vera will plead. "Dance with me." Charles will
shuffle into her arms, and they hold each other close, the handsome soldier
and his girl in the red dress, knowing each step by heart.
Š 2006 The Washington Post Company
Runge
Spammer
"Earl Evleth" <evl...@wanadoo.fr> a écrit dans le message de news:
C018026F.960B4%evl...@wanadoo.fr...
> © 2006 The Washington Post Company
>
PTRAVEL
"Earl Evleth" <evl...@wanadoo.fr> wrote in message
news:C018026F.960B4%evl...@wanadoo.fr...
> Maybe this story will even soften the hard heart
> of Grunge.
>
> ******
Interesting post. Thanks.
Runge
"PTRAVEL" <ptravel8...@yahoo.com> a écrit dans le message de news:
45fg2qF...@individual.net...
Earl Evleth
"Runge" <phi...@bigfoot.com> wrote:
> no it will not I'm not interested in your "stories"
> Spammer
>
>
> "Earl Evleth" <evl...@wanadoo.fr> a écrit dans le message de news:
> C018026F.960B4%evl...@wanadoo.fr...
>> Maybe this story will even soften the hard heart
>> of Grunge.
Grunge the Grinch
nightjar
> Here Came The War Brides
> 60 Years Ago, a Vast Wave of British Women Followed Their New Loves to a
> New
> Land
>
> By Tamara Jones
> Washington Post Staff Writer
> Sunday, February 12, 2006; D01
>
> Vera is certain even now that it began with the red dress. London in the
> waning months of World War II was unbearably dark and dreary. Vera
> Cracknell
> was just 18, and sick of the anti-barrage balloons that blotted out the
> sun,
> sick of carrying the smelly rubber gas mask wherever she went. One day, a
> flash of color brought her to a halt outside a downtown shop window. Vera
> remembers her older sister shaking her head.
>
> "You can't buy that! It would take all your coupons!"
>
> The dress had tiny brass rivets and a twirly skirt. Vera was a junior
> hostess at an American Red Cross club behind Harrod's. Dancing with the
> flirtatious GIs let her forget the screaming bombers and deafening ack-ack
> guns. She handed over her entire year's worth of clothing rations and took
> the red dress home.
In the waning months of WW2, the Luftwaffe was having trouble putting up
fighters over Germany, let alone sending bombers to London. The only bombers
that screamed, were Stuka dive bombers fitted with sirens, which had proven
to be too vulnerable to fighters to use in attacks on Britain after their
use against the radar stations in May 1940 and which had never been used
against London. Even the V-weapons stopped after March 1945, when the launch
sites had all been overrun.
Barrage balloons and ack-ack guns don't mix, so they were used in different
zones of the defense system. Also, as the balloons only had a service life
of a few months, they were only flown when there was a threat of an attack.
Nobody really took the gas attack seriously and even quite early in the war
it was necessary to give advance warning of gas attack practices, to ensure
that at least some of the people in the area had their masks with them.
This is a romantic novel, not history.
Colin Bignell
Earl Evleth
.uk.com>" <nightjar@<insert my surname here> wrote:
> This is a romantic novel, not history.
I would say it was romantic history.
Tom Peel
> On Wed, 15 Feb 2006 08:36:21 -0000, in rec.travel.europe, "nightjar" <nightjar@<insert my
> surname here>.uk.com> arranged some electrons, so they looked like this :
>
> ... In the waning months of WW2, the Luftwaffe was having trouble putting up
> ... fighters over Germany, let alone sending bombers to London. The only bombers
> ... that screamed, were Stuka dive bombers fitted with sirens, which had proven
> ... to be too vulnerable to fighters to use in attacks on Britain after their
> ... use against the radar stations in May 1940 and which had never been used
> ... against London. Even the V-weapons stopped after March 1945, when the launch
> ... sites had all been overrun.
> ...
> ... Barrage balloons and ack-ack guns don't mix, so they were used in different
> ... zones of the defense system. Also, as the balloons only had a service life
> ... of a few months, they were only flown when there was a threat of an attack.
> ... Nobody really took the gas attack seriously and even quite early in the war
> ... it was necessary to give advance warning of gas attack practices, to ensure
> ... that at least some of the people in the area had their masks with them.
>
> Pardon my ignorance - what were the barrage balloons for?
>
They were supposed to deter low level attacks, not so much the balloons
themselves, but the steel cables to which they were attached. I recall
my elder sister telling me that as a young girl in London, she saw a
German fighter plane flying so low that she could clearly see the pilot.
T.
Earl Evleth
"Magda" <ma...@chrisecc.ie> wrote:
> Pardon my ignorance - what were the barrage balloons for?
They were attached to the ground by long cables, of a plane flew into the
cables it was likely to slice a wing off. I don't remember their being
that effective. Allied bombers over Germany did not encounter them
and the main problem was flack as well as German fighter attacks. Over
the target area, the fighters did not attack and the flack was the main
problem.
I think they were employed in WWI against the Zepplin attacks, machine guns
could be fired by men in baskets hanging from the balloons. Eventually
the Zepplins, filled with hydrogen gas, became vulnerable to higher
attacking aircraft.
Tim C.
>On Wed, 15 Feb 2006 08:36:21 -0000, in rec.travel.europe, "nightjar" <nightjar@<insert my
>surname here>.uk.com> arranged some electrons, so they looked like this :
>
> ... In the waning months of WW2, the Luftwaffe was having trouble putting up
> ... fighters over Germany, let alone sending bombers to London. The only bombers
> ... that screamed, were Stuka dive bombers fitted with sirens, which had proven
> ... to be too vulnerable to fighters to use in attacks on Britain after their
> ... use against the radar stations in May 1940 and which had never been used
> ... against London. Even the V-weapons stopped after March 1945, when the launch
> ... sites had all been overrun.
> ...
> ... Barrage balloons and ack-ack guns don't mix, so they were used in different
> ... zones of the defense system. Also, as the balloons only had a service life
> ... of a few months, they were only flown when there was a threat of an attack.
> ... Nobody really took the gas attack seriously and even quite early in the war
> ... it was necessary to give advance warning of gas attack practices, to ensure
> ... that at least some of the people in the area had their masks with them.
>
>Pardon my ignorance - what were the barrage balloons for?
As Tom says. It'd be like the pilots trying to fly through a forest. But
one where the trees are almost invisible steel cables that'd rip the plane
to pieces if it hit one.
--
Tim C.
Des Small
> Pardon my ignorance - what were the barrage balloons for?
To cheer people up. The Blitz was just a big party in Old
Londontown.
Des
irwell
The barrage balloons were handled by the RAF, the Anti Aircraft guns
came under the command of the Royal Artillery.
The balloons were deployed on the outer perimeters of target areas,
they were winched up and down by cables, at various altitudes.
Sometimes they were so high up they only looked like small silver
specks in the sky. Ocassionaly one would escape from the mooring
vehicle, making for a hectic chase to try and recover them.
EvelynVogtGamble(Divamanque)
nightjar
Well, how accurate is YOUR memory of events sixty years ago?
These women were in their late teens at the time, the
whole situation was "romantic" to them, and there's no doubt
they've embroidered upon events over the intervening years.
I don't think it's become a "romantic novel" deliberately
- that's probably how they remember it, whatever the facts
may be.
>
> Colin Bignell
>
>
nightjar
"Magda" <ma...@chrisecc.ie> wrote in message
news:2k26v1920hfacqfeu...@4ax.com...
...
> Pardon my ignorance - what were the barrage balloons for?
Primarily, to keep enemy aircraft flying high. Over major cities, the aim
was to make accurate bombing difficult. Around harbours, they also helped to
prevent aerial mine laying. Ships also carried them to deter dive bombers
and isolated strategic targets were sometimes surrounded by them for the
same reason.
Colin Bignell
Runge
"irwell" <ho...@yahoo.com> a écrit dans le message de news:
18l6v1p0cbhtoqoom...@4ax.com...
Runge
Oooops sorry, DUH !
"EvelynVogtGamble(Divamanque)" <evg...@earthlink.net> a écrit dans le
message de news: dsvn5...@news2.newsguy.com...
Runge
you know how to, eh?
"nightjar .uk.com>" <nightjar@<insert my surname here> a écrit dans le
message de news: SeednSm5oOv...@giganews.com...
nightjar
"EvelynVogtGamble(Divamanque)" <evg...@earthlink.net> wrote in message
news:dsvn5...@news2.newsguy.com...
...
> Well, how accurate is YOUR memory of events sixty years ago? These women
> were in their late teens at the time, the whole situation was "romantic"
> to them, and there's no doubt they've embroidered upon events over the
I seriously doubt that they were responsible for the text. On the few
occasions I have been 'quoted' in the press, I have been hard pressed to
recognise what was printed as originating with what I said.
Colin Bignell
DGS
> Ty evleth for such an interesting thread, quite in topic as usual.
> you know how to, eh?
Hey, Spunge! How'd you like your teeth kicked in?
C'mon, say you'd like it. You know you would.
--
dgs
DGS
> Oh such great travel news !
You don't like it, asshole?
GOOD! Choke on it!
--
dgs
nightjar
...
> Thank you, guys.
> I have been wondering how those worked since I saw The Empty Child last
> year. Guess what -
> war films are not my cuppa... ;)
>
I'm not sure any war films would help explain the use of barrage balloons. I
have a 1943 Government publication, called Roof Over Britain, which, apart
from radar, which only gets a brief mention as radio direction finding,
details the work of Britain's air defences.
Colin Bignell
Earl Evleth
"EvelynVogtGamble(Divamanque)" <evg...@earthlink.net> wrote:
> Well, how accurate is YOUR memory of events sixty years ago?
> These women were in their late teens at the time, the
> whole situation was "romantic" to them, and there's no doubt
> they've embroidered upon events over the intervening years.
> I don't think it's become a "romantic novel" deliberately
> - that's probably how they remember it, whatever the facts
> may be.
I have read several books on the war brides. The
American soldiers based in Britain had the advantage
of being paid better, at the same rank, than the
British and that created some unfair competition.
Also they had access to food items the British did not
have so these were presented as gifts to the family
of their girl friends. Lastly the courting styles were
different and Americans tended to do things like open doors
for women etc. So our own American self-image as being a bit
crude was not completely true at that time or still. All
these things did impress the British girls at the time, some
of them.
So yes, there was romance involved. Not all the stories came out
well since life in America was often not that smooth so divorces
occurred, some lives were shattered.
The German war brides have it worse since at the beginning there
was a rule of non-fraternization. Which did not work, young men
and women being what they are. We recently finished
a book about a Austrian woman who lived in Berchtesgaden and as a young
child sat on Hitler's lap as a photoop. "On Hitler's Mountain : Overcoming
the Legacy of a Nazi Childhood" by Irmgard A. Hunt. She as born in the
30s, and was fairly poor. Her father died in France as a soldier
in 1942 but it was never clear from what. Her parents were avid supporters
of Hitler but several in the family were not, including a grandfather who
was rabidly anti-Hitler. She eventually went to the US, had children,
divorced and remarried. Her mother remained anti-Semitic for life but Hunt
married a Jewish doctor.
One of my favorite forms of reading material are biographies. I am currently
reading a biography on Woody Guthrie, the American folk singer.
Earl Evleth
"Martin" <m...@privacy.net> wrote:
> "Over sexed, over paid and over here"
Sexual politics is such that women will often
chose men on the basis of their projected
sexuality and having the financial ability
to support of wife and family.
Of course, the girls usually have to like them too.
sh...@abertay.ac.uk
PTRAVEL wrote:
> "Earl Evleth" <evl...@wanadoo.fr> wrote in message
> news:C018026F.960B4%evl...@wanadoo.fr...
> > of Grunge.
> >
>
> Interesting post. Thanks.
There's a TV film made in 1986 called "Johnny Bull", dealing with a
London cockney girl who comes to live with her American husband's
family in the 1950's. Although not about war brides as such, it
parallels the problems ecountered by a few of them who didn't realise
what they were getting themselves into. The following is from the
IMDB:-
"An English girl (Suzanna Hamilton) comes to America to join her
American husband (Peter MacNicol) in a Pennsylvania coal town in the
late 1950's. She faces the ire of her new mother-in-law (Colleen
Dewhurst), a former Hungarian with different ideas about the life and
culture that her son should have. Jason Robards also appears as the
man's father and Kathy Bates plays his dim-witted sister."
Dr. Barry Worthington
Patrick Wallace
during the war and passed on to me: Bulgy the Barrage Balloon.
On Wed, 15 Feb 2006 23:24:16 +0100, Magda <ma...@chrisecc.ie> wrote:
>On Wed, 15 Feb 2006 17:48:26 -0000, in rec.travel.europe, "nightjar" <nightjar@<insert my
>surname here>.uk.com> arranged some electrons, so they looked like this :
>
> ...
> ... "Magda" <ma...@chrisecc.ie> wrote in message
> ... news:2k26v1920hfacqfeu...@4ax.com...
> ... ...
> ... > Pardon my ignorance - what were the barrage balloons for?
> ...
> ... Primarily, to keep enemy aircraft flying high. Over major cities, the aim
> ... was to make accurate bombing difficult. Around harbours, they also helped to
> ... prevent aerial mine laying. Ships also carried them to deter dive bombers
> ... and isolated strategic targets were sometimes surrounded by them for the
> ... same reason.
> ...
> ... Colin Bignell
L. Frank Matthews
and not just british war brides.
my mother is (kinda) a french war bride.
she worked for the finance ministry and after the Liberation managed
(through a cousin's connection) to get a job at the French Embassy in
washington since she spoke english.
supposedly she was on the first ship to leave France.
my father was serving out his enlistment delivering mail between
government offices in DC.
the Swiss Embassy had a dance...
they both went...
ttyl
Frank (the franco-american)
Earl Evleth wrote:
> Maybe this story will even soften the hard heart
> of Grunge.
>
> ******
>
> Here Came The War Brides
> 60 Years Ago, a Vast Wave of British Women Followed Their New Loves to a New
> Land
>
> By Tamara Jones
> Washington Post Staff Writer
> Sunday, February 12, 2006; D01
>
> Vera is certain even now that it began with the red dress. London in the
> waning months of World War II was unbearably dark and dreary. Vera Cracknell
> was just 18, and sick of the anti-barrage balloons that blotted out the sun,
> sick of carrying the smelly rubber gas mask wherever she went. One day, a
> flash of color brought her to a halt outside a downtown shop window. Vera
> remembers her older sister shaking her head.
>
> "You can't buy that! It would take all your coupons!"
>
> The dress had tiny brass rivets and a twirly skirt. Vera was a junior
> hostess at an American Red Cross club behind Harrod's. Dancing with the
> flirtatious GIs let her forget the screaming bombers and deafening ack-ack
> guns. She handed over her entire year's worth of clothing rations and took
> the red dress home.
>
> When she wore it for the first time, an American sergeant followed her into
> the club and asked her to dance. In the sunroom of his Leisure World condo
> near Leesburg, Charles Long recalls the moment with tender conviction: "It
> was love at first sight, absolutely." With her raven hair, porcelain skin
> and eyes the pale green of sea glass, Vera toyed with her share of suitors,
> but Charles persevered even after she stood him up on their first date.
>
> They married when the war ended, and Vera soon found herself crossing the
> Atlantic aboard the Queen Mary, the famed luxury liner winding down her war
> service as part of an amazing armada carrying some 70,000 young British war
> brides and their babies.
>
> It was 60 years ago this month that the first ship arrived in New York
> Harbor, launching what was officially known as the War Brides Operation.
> Over the next five months, 20 converted war ships would be in perpetual
> motion across the Atlantic, a floating procession of brides. Some 200
> reporters and newsreel cameras greeted the first "petticoat pilgrims," as
> the British media had dubbed them. A special act of Congress had waived
> immigration quotas for the war brides, and they claimed a unique place in
> the country's social fabric -- a mass influx of foreigners drawn here not by
> need but by love. Across America the women scattered, becoming Iowa
> farmwives who grew "tomahtoes" or overly polite New Yorkers who muttered "oy
> vey" with British accents. They rode trolleys through the streets of
> Washington and plied swamp boats through the backwaters of Mississippi.
>
> They slipped quietly into their new lives, and were quickly forgotten.
> Precious Cargo
>
> Love isn't like that anymore, is what Joan Stubbs will tell you if you ask
> her. "Today people stand up in front of the altar and pledge their lives and
> don't mean it," she laments from the house her husband built her in
> Gloucester, Va. She married her Walter when she was just 17. He was one of
> the Army Air Corps boys who played cards each night in the village cafe; she
> was the air-raid warden's daughter who would come remind them to draw the
> blackout curtains. Sometimes Walter would walk her home in the moonlight.
> "He liked to talk," she remembers, "and I liked to listen."
>
> War had already torn a gaping hole in Joan's childhood. She and her older
> sister were among thousands of schoolchildren evacuated from the capital
> when the London Blitz began, sent to the countryside to live with strangers.
> Joan was 11. The besieged capital was 30 miles away, she guesses, and "at
> night you could see London burning." When Joan was 14, her father came to
> collect her -- their house had been destroyed in a direct hit, and now her
> parents were fleeing the city as well. They all moved to a one-lane village
> called Bourne End, near the aerodrome where B-17s took off. Walter Stubbs
> belonged to the regiment known as Fame's Favored Few.
>
> Joan was aboard that first love boat to America. She remembers the Argentina
> setting sail without fanfare. "We weren't allowed to have anyone see us
> off," she says. Families had to bid their daughters farewell at the train
> station. The girls then reported to processing camps, where there were
> mountains of forms to fill out in triplicate, thick stacks of documents to
> read and humiliating physicals to endure, standing naked before Army doctors
> who scanned their bodies with flashlights.
>
> The U.S. military bore the cost of transportation, but the Red Cross budget
> to staff and supply the operation was $100,000. At the processing camps,
> cradles were made out of orange crates, while 20 war vessels were stocked
> with pureed peas, talcum powder and safety pins. Babies had to be at least 3
> months old to travel, and women could not be more than seven months
> pregnant. Joan met a woman who slipped on the deck and would have lost her
> daughter overboard if a passing steward hadn't caught the infant. Thirteen
> babies who sailed from Belgium with their mothers aboard the Zebulon Vance
> were reported dead after an outbreak of diarrhea.
>
> Sometimes the stress of waiting for passage from war-torn Europe pushed the
> brides to the breaking point. When 87 women expecting to ship out of Germany
> discovered there was space for only 10, bedlam erupted at the processing
> camp.
>
> "Elephants on a rampage never trumpeted louder," the Red Cross staff
> reported back to national headquarters. "Books were swept off shelves,
> tables and chairs overturned. Crockery ornaments were hurled to the floor.
> Coca cola bottles smashed against the fireplace. In short, an atomic bomb
> could not have caused more chaos. The post physician was called to attend to
> three hysterical women, and the MPs came in to stop the flying bric-a-brac."
>
> British troops returning from years of combat would heckle and jeer at the
> women from the decks of their ships docking in Southampton as the brides set
> sail. The well-supplied American soldiers already were scorned in a popular
> slogan for being "oversexed, overpaid and over here." Now they were
> plundering the population of would-be English wives.
>
> Joan Stubbs was oblivious to any controversy. "I think I was too young to
> realize the impact of what I was doing," she reflects.
>
> Covered in ice from an overnight storm, the Argentina entered New York
> Harbor at 2:30 that February morning. Joan remembers the brides all rushing
> to the deck, shivering in the bitter wind to catch the first glimpse of
> their new homeland. "Can you imagine after four years of darkness what it
> was like to see the Statue of Liberty all lit up for us?" Joan's voice
> cracks at the memory. "It was such a beautiful sight."
>
> Walter was waiting for her in Virginia, where they would be living with his
> parents. She called him from the Norfolk train station. He was shocked to
> find her in the baggage room, sitting on the "colored" bench. Segregation
> was an alien concept to her.
>
> The teen bride is 78 now. She lost Walter two years ago this April. Their
> two children, and even the grandchildren, are grown and gone. Now a
> great-grandchild is on the way. "I'm kind of alone here," says Joan. She
> feels him beside her still, in the pool where he swam 12 laps a day, or when
> she discovers an old birthday card tucked inside a book, or when she
> misplaces something and hears herself ask, 'Well, Walter, where is it?' and
> then it always turns up. He is the only man she ever loved.
>
> "Who would think all this would come out of war?" she wonders.
> A British Sisterhood
>
> The stereo is blaring "Yes, We Have No Bananas," and the septuagenarians are
> out of control. They dance a conga line through the hostess's living room, a
> Carmen Miranda in silver lamé kicking up her heels with the Groucho Marx
> surgeon who keeps squirting people in the face with water from his
> gag-syringe. Something that sounds like china crashes to the floor. "There's
> trifle!" the hostess carols, hoping to herd some of the revelers into the
> dining room, where the table offers potluck testimony to English culinary
> arts involving unset Jell-O and Matterhorns of whipped cream.
>
> The annual Guy Fawkes Day costume party in November -- commemorating a
> foiled plot to burn the British Parliament -- is a rip-roaring success. The
> war brides beam. The small clubs they formed out of newlywed loneliness
> became cultural touchstones polished smooth over the decades. They hold
> garden parties each June to celebrate the queen's birthday. They fly the
> Union Jack on British holidays.
>
> The Transatlantic Brides and Parents Association began even before the last
> war bride ship had left England back in 1946, formed by families who
> despaired that they would never see their daughters again. The young women
> came largely from working-class homes, and travel was prohibitively
> expensive. Telephones were rare and overseas calls exorbitant.
>
> As the association grew ever larger, a heartsick father had an idea: The
> families could charter flights to the States. The parents' networking in
> turn connected the lonely brides to one another, and social clubs began
> popping up across the United States.
>
> When Doris Amspaugh put a notice in her community paper asking if there were
> any other British war brides in Vienna who wanted to get together for a
> proper cup of tea, she was surprised when a dozen women responded. Vera Long
> was among them. Hearing everyone else's stories over the years piqued Vera's
> curiosity so much that she wrote a history project about the brides while
> studying at George Mason University, and turned it into a book a few years
> ago. Tentative fingers gently brush each young face when the women gaze at
> the old pictures Vera collected.
>
> There's Patricia, didn't she look just like Ingrid Bergman? She's dead, and
> this couple here, the husband is dead and Eunice moved closer to her
> daughter out West. There's Jack and Doris on their honeymoon. That's
> Margaret; she's here but has dementia, and here's Annie the Scottish girl;
> she died this past year.
>
> They cross winter's seas together still. Baby showers have given way to
> funerals, love letters have become eulogies.
>
> No one kept any statistics on how many of the marriages lasted, though
> Vera's research led her to hypothesize that the divorce rate was around 8
> percent. The number who stayed in unhappy marriages would never be known.
> Return passage to England was funded by the government for only one year
> after arrival, and for mothers whose children were American citizens, going
> home could mean losing custody in a U.S. divorce. Some women got off the
> bride ships only to discover that their GI husbands were already married.
> Others found themselves isolated in rural areas, London birds recast as
> prairie wives in the Dakotas, or married no longer to a dashing soldier but
> to a trapper living in a backwoods cabin with no running water or
> electricity.
>
> "I think people were tougher then and you accepted what you had," says
> Doris. She remembers how the stress of adapting made her hair fall out in
> clumps for the first two years here. Only a handful of actual war brides
> remain in her club, but the tea party grew to 50 at one point, and has since
> expanded to include postwar couples, homesick nannies and British expats in
> perpetual search of a decent trifle.
>
> Doris's husband, Jack, converted their Vienna basement into a faux English
> pub where they threw parties. "But after Jack died, I didn't much like
> coming down here alone," Doris says. She is 86 now. Jack's been gone nearly
> 20 years. The mahogany four-poster he bought for her arrival still stands
> polished in their bedroom.
>
> Those whose wartime romances did endure describe love not as a complicated
> mystery but as a simple truth.
>
> Charles never proposed properly, Vera reveals over Yorkshire tea and
> digestive biscuits in her dining room. Charles sips guiltily from his china
> cup. He thought sending her cheery instructions to fill out the seven-page
> application required by the Army made his intentions clear enough.
>
> "What cheek!" Vera declares.
>
> What about that first date? Charles counters. They were supposed to meet at
> Marble Arch, and Vera never showed. "As I got ready to go, this other
> American who was always bringing things brought this huge case of strawberry
> preserves," she explains.
>
> "Remember, I brought you lemon drops," Charles counters plaintively.
>
> "You brought me lemon drops, yes."
>
> Charles was working with military intelligence to break the Germans' famed
> Enigma code. Cracking the code of romance proved tougher. Transferred to
> Paris to work on Russian encryptions when the war ended, Charles returned to
> England for his wedding bearing a box of cigars instead of champagne.
>
> "He said it was easier to carry," Vera says.
>
> "Honey, now you behave," Charles replies mildly. "She never forgave me. At
> the time, we were given free champagne or cognac in Germany after the war. I
> thought it was pretty noble because I had to pay for the cigars."
>
> Vera remembers there was also a bottle of French perfume, which she saved,
> only to drop it on the floor of her cabin in her excitement to get ready to
> walk down the Queen Mary gangplank and into Charles's arms. She quickly
> shared the leaking perfume with the other giddy brides, and a cloud of
> Chanel No. 5 followed them into America.
>
> Settling into a rented room with a shared bath on 18th Street NE, Charles
> embarked on a career as a pioneer who would help usher the CIA into the
> computer era. Vera worked as a secretary until she became pregnant the
> following year with the first of their two children. Washington left her
> both dazzled and dejected. "I was annoyed that everything was perfect. It
> was such a shock to me to see everything so white, shiny and beautiful."
> Save for the scarcity of housing, America bore no mark from the war that had
> caused her such hardship. Vera hadn't seen bananas in so long that she made
> an entire dinner out of them for Charles's bemused sister.
>
> They threw a big party for their 60th anniversary last fall. A tea dance, of
> course. Charles gave Vera a diamond eternity ring.
>
> They still love to play the music from those days, that war, their time.
> Vera turns 80 next month, but the four different British organizations she
> now belongs to keep her busy, and her exercise classes keep her fit. She
> worries, though, about Charles. He is 87, and having some trouble getting
> around. She puts Glenn Miller on to coax him away from his computer.
>
> "Come on, come on, come on," Vera will plead. "Dance with me." Charles will
> shuffle into her arms, and they hold each other close, the handsome soldier
> and his girl in the red dress, knowing each step by heart.
> Š 2006 The Washington Post Company
>