Military Wives E-Book

Penny Legg

• Herausgeber: The History Press
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 445

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2015

Beschreibung

For as long as there have been armed forces there have been camp followers – the families who move with the military to stay with their men. This book looks at the experiences of just a few of these families, through the eyes of the military wives and their relatives. From the First World War, when many women were fiancées but never wives, through the Second World War and postwar Britain to the present day and twenty-first-century service life, military wives talk about their experiences as never before. What is it really like to be married to a member of Britain's Armed Forces? Can you ever be prepared for the reality that awaits you when you say 'I do' and walk down the aisle? From Big Bertha's booms, rationing and bomb shelters, to military wives choirs, Afghanistan and marathons, this book celebrates that great British heroine, the military wife.

Leseprobe

For the unsung heroines, the military wives, and for Joe, Royal Navy Falklands veteran, my hero.

AUTHOR’S NOTE

Time dims even the sharpest memory. Please bear with the storyteller if some of the details in these tales are not quite as posterity has recorded them.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

With a book like this it is very difficult to know where to start when it comes to saying thank you. So many people have helped me along the way and I hope I have remembered everyone. If I have missed anyone, please accept my apologies and sincere thanks.

Firstly, I must thank Sophie Bradshaw, general history & gift publisher and my commissioning editor, and Jo De Vries, senior commissioning editor at The History Press.

I couldn’t have written this book without Jay Armstrong, Caroline, Lady Richards, Carol Backhouse, Jo’ Ball, Lauren Bray, Kate Churchward, Gladys Curtis, Laura Delahay, Gail Douglas, Anthea Fillingham, Alis Glencross, Joy Hale, Sarah Hattingh, Barbara Hill, Phyllis Holroyd, Steffi Hughes, Fiona Jameson, Phyllida Joel, Sarah Kiff, Nicola Laing, Jade Leahy, Olive Leahy, Helen Malcolmson, Kelly Malster, Lorraine Matthews, Carol Musgrove, Irene Noyce, Margherita ‘Rita’ Woosnam, Liesel Parkinson, Sue Piper, Dr Jean Powell, Dr Clare Shaw, June Stead, Jean Weeks, Charlotte Woolrich and Kay Wylie. Thank you for the super chats, lovely coffee and cake and, above all, for trusting me with your stories.

I am indebted to Susanne Dawson for allowing me to use her mother Rose’s story in this book, and for her help with admin during the production of this book.

With kind appreciation to: Maianna Moreau and Jenny Cuffe for allowing the use of material produced for the book, This is my Home Now; Iris Mardon, for allowing me to delve into her mother, Winifred Deahl’s, wartime diary; Mike and Gill Holloway, for their continuing help and support; Jay Armstrong (www.jayarmstrong.co.uk) for permission to use the photograph of Kate Churchward and her family; James Marsh and the Marsh family for permission to use Edith Marsh’s Second World War experiences; Pam Whittington, for the use of her poetry in this book, and for her valued friendship; Christopher and Eve Leahy, for not giving up the search and bringing me Lily Hannah’s story; Wendi Friend, for excellent research and dogged determination; Roy and Lynn Lambeth, for allowing the Winter family First World War history to be told in this book; Eon Matthews, for his continuing staunch support and friendship. It is appreciated.

With grateful thanks to: Pauline and Simon Weeks, and Trish Simpson, for their help and assistance; John and June Curtis, for their support of this project; Ron Stead for encouragement and enthusiasm; Nicola Donoghue, for her admin support and long-distance assistance; Sarah Gomes, online officer at Charnwood LV (www.leicestershirevillages.com) for her assistance in making contact with a local photographer and Peter Smith, photographer, for permission to use his Anstey Church images. Thanks also to Dom, aka ‘Bad CO’, at www.rearparty.co.uk, Facebook friends who pointed the way when I got stuck, and Pip Legg, my four-legged old friend, who sleeps peacefully on my desk while I work.

Last as ever, but by no means least, my husband Joe, for being there.

CONTENTS

Title

Dedication

Author’s

Note

Acknowledgements

Foreword

Introduction

Prologue

To Those Left Behind

by June Stead

1                 The First World War and Beyond

2                 Another World War

3                 Post-war Britain

4                 The End of the Twentieth Century

5                 A New Beginning

Epilogue

The Final Word

Bibliography

Plates

Copyright

FOREWORD

I am delighted and honoured to be asked to write the Foreword to Military Wives: From the First World War to Afghanistan. For too long the role of the military wife has been largely overlooked and misunderstood. Penny Legg, a naval wife, has taken up the challenge of researching the lives of military wives. She narrates their story through their own words: through the personal accounts of those who have lived and breathed the life. It is a fascinating and compelling read. I hope it leads to them receiving the recognition in Whitehall that good regiments, ships and air stations have always instinctively accorded them.

Few in society give much thought to the wife of a serviceman. Yet her role can be described as having ‘operational importance’; if the wife and family of the serviceman deployed overseas are well cared for and happy, the better he can concentrate on the task in hand. In 1885, Sir James Gildea, the founder of SSAFA wrote to The Times on behalf of the wives and children of those on active service ‘so they are not altogether forgotten, or that the cry of poverty and want be not added to that of suspense and anxiety’.

Perhaps the words ‘suspense and anxiety’ sum up why military wives deserve our respect and gratitude. Yet too often, in awe of the chain of command, wives lack confidence and fear stepping out of line. Indeed, they are often discouraged from voicing their anxieties. As mentioned in these pages, the inspirational Military Wives Choir has helped lift their self-esteem and has quite literally given wives a voice. For this reason I highly recommend this book which records the extraordinary lives of our brave and resilient military wives. In a world of emails and text messages this book leaves an important and lasting legacy; a tribute to the wives of our Armed Forces. As my husband would say, the indomitable spirit of Lady Sale lives on!

Caroline, Lady Richards

Wife of General Sir David Richards and the founder of the Afghan Appeal Fund: afghanappealfund.org.uk

INTRODUCTION

In 2011, I had the good fortune to be commissioned to produce a project I had been nurturing for some time – namely to save for posterity the experiences of British and Commonwealth military personnel who had all served Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II in the sixty years of her reign. Under The Queen’s Colours was the result, published in time for Her Majesty’s diamond jubilee. The book raises funds for three service charities and was a lot of fun, if hard work, to put together. I got to meet many good people, hear about their experiences, laugh, cry and sigh with them. I was very grateful for the trust that these servicemen and women placed in me when they supported the project and it was a real privilege to get to know them.

When I was approached by my publisher and asked if I would like to produce a sequel, but this time looking at the experiences of the women married to the men in the military uniforms, I had no hesitation. I looked forward to hearing the opposite side of the coin, the women’s story, which is so seldom heard. This book is the result. To produce it, I spoke to a number of ladies, all of whom had one thing in common – they were married to men in the British armed services at one time in their lives. I, too, was once a military spouse and I knew that there were stories to be told.

Marrying, or in this day and age, partnering, a member of Her Majesty’s Armed Forces is not something that is undertaken lightly. Throughout history, it is the service personnel who put their lives at risk for monarch and country, and their loved ones who are left behind, to wait, hope and worry until they come back. If they don’t return, life is never the same.

This book takes us back briefly to the First World War, when many women became fiancées but never wives. Their men were lost in a vicious war the like of which, it was hoped, would never be seen again. It was the war to end all wars and it took its toll on the British male military population, many of whom were conscripts.

Through the 1920s and 1930s women came to terms with their menfolk in peacetime military service, which sometimes brought its own problems, particularly as long separations, often for years at a time, were the norm.

Then came the Second World War, the war that struck terror into the hearts of all those who remembered the horrors of 1914–18. Gas masks, mass call-ups, women taking their men’s places and make-do-and-mend were the order of the day.

The post-war era brought a plethora of small wars and crises – in Korea, Suez, Aden, Northern Ireland, the Falklands and the Gulf, until the twenty-first century arrived, and with it, Afghanistan. Throughout all, women have been behind their men, quietly getting on with their lives and giving the stability and domestic home life that balances the military discipline and frontline danger. These women have stood by men maimed and disfigured by war, whose minds and bodies will forever be tormented by experiences unimagined by most civilians. They put up with being left on their own, often for months at a time and often with several children, a home and a career of their own to look after. Nomads, they move from place to place, following their men, becoming adept at leaving their homes spotless for white gloved ‘march outs’ when moving on, fully able to change a fuse, unblock a sink or a toilet, be both mummy and daddy to a confused little one and yet still be a loving wife when the wanderer returns.

This book, which will help to raise funds for the Sailors, Soldiers, Airmen & Families Association (SSAFA), takes a behind-the-scenes look at life for military wives in the last 100 years. It seeks to show life, warts and all, for those unseen heroines, the military wives.

Penny Legg, 2015

PROLOGUE

TO THOSE LEFT BEHINDBY JUNE STEAD

A tear fell, then another

Into the sea to follow your calling

Once more you had left

For shores far away

Sailing into the sunset

Shipmates only for company

As I turned my back

One part of me died

But look, another part opens

For your sons now beckon

What’s for dinner Mum?

Are my shorts washed?

Not a care in their world

’Cept stomach and footer

Your letter arrives

‘Been to a banyan, it was good

Hope everything is fine with you’

No tears now, only tired eyes

Been up all night, two sick boys

Washing machine broke

Then telly broke

As navy wives we had no training

But jack-of-all-trades are we

Fix the window, mend the fuse

Car broken down – yet again

Ship due home, clean the house

Scrub the floors, polish the windows

New dress must have and shoes too

More tears are shed but tears of joy

For we are a family once more

Boys have their Dad

I have my mate, and, as he said before leaving

There is a silver lining

Would I swap my life for another?

Never,

I am a sailor’s wife for ever

June Stead

1

THE FIRST WORLD WARAND BEYOND

The big guns opened up from Calais …It was a bit traumatic at the time …

Joy Hale

Much time has passed since the First World War. To us, looking back from the high-tech world of the twenty-first century, grainy, silent images of men and equipment moving jerkily around boggy trenches and over wasteland give a visual idea of the awfulness of battle, while well-tended war memorials, and cemeteries that dot both Britain and abroad are all that remain to give an indication of the scale of loss from the conflict. The last of the servicemen actually to take part in the war has passed away, and so, like all events, the ‘war to end war’ as H.G. Wells termed it, has slowly sunk into the pages of history.

When the men went to fight for king and country, the women were left to pick up the reins and keep the country going. More than a million women joined the work force between 1914 and 1918 (BBC). Many joined the Civil Service as typists or clerks. Others drove trams or other forms of transport. Some toiled in munitions or chemical factories, often working in hazardous conditions for long hours. All seized the opportunity to show that, although they were mere women, they could keep the country going in its time of need. In the process, they realised newfound independence.

Trying to find words left behind by military wives about their experiences of being married to a serviceman in this period has been a challenge. Many letters home from the front to loved ones have survived the passage of time, but few letters from wives to their men arrived back to Blighty and then survived until the present. It is left to families to track down and record the details of their family history and, in so doing, to bring just a small idea of the life military wives lived a century or so ago.

MARGARET WINTER

There are no words left by Margaret, known as ‘Maggie’ to her loved ones. Her family have managed to trace the family tree and so know a little of her domestic life, and have documents and some letters that refer to her. The whole, meagre but fascinating, collection provides a small insight into what some military wives of the day had to deal with.

She was born Margaret Payne in 1884, and married William Dan Winter on 4 August 1907 in Southampton. She was the daughter of George Payne, a shipwright who did not live to see his daughter married, and he the son of Dan Winter, a carter. At the time of their marriage, 24-year-old William Dan was a baker journeyman and Maggie a tailoress. Of their four children, only one survived to adulthood. Little William Dan was born in 1909 and died a year later. In 1911, Emily Elizabeth Margaret was born, and it is through her that the family line ran forward. Her brother, Thomas, was born and died in 1913.

Then came the First World War, and baker William Dan found himself leaving Hampshire for the army and, eventually, the Western Front as Pte William D. Winter 32976, part of the 8th Lincolnshire Regiment. His war would eventually take him to the Arras Offensive and a fateful date with destiny.

Meanwhile, in 1915, Albert, known as ‘Bertie’, was born. This third son died tragically a week before his 1st birthday after falling into an open fire and dying of his injuries. Maggie was now alone with little Emily, known affectionately as ‘Emmie’.

William Dan was stationed at Chiseldon, Swindon. In an undated letter sent to his sister before going to France in early 1917, he is clearly worried about his wife, ‘I am sorry Maggie is no better. I pray to God that she will for I do not know what I shall do if she goes. I hope that she will be well when I comes back from the front … I wish they would let me home to see her once more.’ Correspondence between William Dan and his oldest sister, Annie Drewett (b. 1870), dated 21 March 1917, sheds light on how Maggie was faring:

My Dear Sister

Just a few lines to you to say that I am very well at present. I can see by Maggie’s writing that she is in a very bad state. I am glad that everyone else is very well at Shirley [Southampton] and little Emmie. I have wrote to Mr Payne, 30 Heysham Road [his father-in-law]. Dear Annie I hope that I shall come through alright. I pray every day and night to do so. I hope for Charlie’s sight to come back [William Charles Drewett, Annie’s husband] as much as for Maggie’s health. If the worst do happen to her, I shall have one consolation – that I have always been a good husband to her and done my very best for her. God bless her. She have been a good wife to me. Dear sister did Ted tell you in his letter that he had one from me? It is a wonder Aunt Martha did not say something about my letter for it was a bit stiff. I told her I was surprised she have not been to see Maggie all the time she been ill after the kindness Maggie done for her Kate and it was like some people the more you done for them the less you get thought of and that Kate was not situated like Maggie and me, having to break our home up whereas she was living with her mother. Very likely the letter I sent pricked her conscience a bit. Dear Annie I am glad Maggie’s mother sent Emmie a few things it will come in handy for her. Tell Emmie that her daddy thinks about her every day. We had a pleasant open air service Tuesday evening before I left for here and we had the hymns we sang when mother was buried and I asked for God be with you till we Meet Again for a farewell hymn. Dear Annie watch the papers for my number. I must close with love to all especially Emmie and Maggie.

From your loving Brother

WD Winter

I hope to see you all again soon. Kisses for my little Emmie and Maggie.

Margaret Winter died on 19 March 1917 of pulmonary tuberculosis. She was 33 years old. The telegram that Annie sent her brother to tell him of his wife’s death did not reach him until 23 March 1917. He wrote to his sister immediately upon hearing the news:

My Dear Sister,

… I received your telegram today Friday 23rd Mar. I left the Base Mon 19th for to go up the line. I am not surprised to hear of Maggie’s death. What she have suffered God alone knows. It is a happy release. I pray she is gone where our Dear Boys and our Dear Mother is which I know she is and if I should get put under I hope to meet her up in heaven where there is no parting. Dear Annie take care of my little girl for me for she is the only one I have to live for. I hope to see her again one day. … I have put the telegram in my C/O’s hands and if I gets away it will be two or three days if I do not see to the Death Benefit from the Oddfellows. If anything happens to me that I get killed you will find it in the bottom drawer of the small chest in a sealed envelope with my will. You will know what to do. I know you will see she is buried decent. … Dear Annie have a few memorial cards … order a dozen. Dear Annie I am sorry she is gone but it is better so it was the Lords will did she die peaceful pray her soul at rest my burden is hard to bear but the good Lord can make it light. My trust is in him and he have made it light already. I think I have said all so I close with love to all especially Emmie from your loving and sorrowing Brother.

WD Winter

William Dan was not allowed home for his wife’s funeral because he had too recently joined his unit. Sadly, the memorial cards he asked his sister to order for Maggie were eventually a joint memorial, as he was killed around 9–12 April 1917:

On the Resurrection morning

Soul and body meet again,

No more sorrow, no more weeping,

No more pain.

On that happy Easter morning

All the graves their dead restore,

Father, mother, sister, brother,

Meet once more.

***

Not long were they divided.

In Loving Memory

Of

William Dan Winter,

(8th Lincolns)

Who was killed in actionbetween the 9th and the 12thof April, 1917,

***

ALSO, HIS DEAR WIFE.

MAGGIE,

Who died March 19th. 1917,Aged 33 Years.

Annie raised Emmie. She married serviceman Horace Lambeth in 1945, thus becoming a military wife herself, and had two children, Leonard and Roy, both of whom survived.

MARGARET MIDDLETON-WEST

Sue Piper, who features later in this book, has the army in her blood. Both her grandfather and her father were officers in the Indian Army. We do not have her grandmother Margaret’s words, but Sue recounts this story, which is an example of what military wives could expect during the First World War:

My mother’s father, Lt Col Stephen Middleton-West FRCS, IMS (Indian Medical Service), was a British surgeon in India with the Indian Army. During the First World War he was posted away. My grandmother, Margaret, was pregnant with my aunt. The lady of the guest house she was staying in turned her out when she found she was pregnant with no husband around! So, eventually, my grandmother travelled from Simla by train to the south of India. My aunt was born by then and spent the whole journey crying, apparently. My aunt wondered if that and the stress caused to my grandmother, was why she, my aunt, suffered from depression/anxiety/restlessness during her life.

My grandparents eventually went to Burma as missionaries.

JESSIE MAUD WHITE

Jessie was born on 4 June 1876 and married a career sailor in the Royal Navy, William Henry Gibeon White on 28 January 1898. At the beginning of the First World War he was a chief petty officer. Their granddaughter, Joy Hale, has studied their family tree and this, combined with knowledge gained from the time, gives an insight into Jessie’s life as a military wife.

Joy takes up the tale:

Jessie’s maiden name was Boryer. The family originally came from Plymouth and we think it possible that there was some sort of French influence. There might well have been. They might have been Boyer – in those days they could not spell and they wrote down whatever they could pronounce.

The family moved to Portsmouth, where she was born, but she had three brothers and sisters born down in Plymouth. Her father, who was Warrant Officer Henry Robert Boryer, served in the Royal Navy until pension and then bought a pub in Emsworth, the Ship Inn, which is still there. It must have been a good thing to do, because two of his sons also became publicans.

Jessie was not very tall, about 5ft 5in. She was a very smart lady. She had worked as an apprentice milliner, which probably accounts for her knowing a little about clothes. She married at 22 and had my mother. Her husband being in the navy, in those days, they had very long commissions and were away for sometimes two and a half years or three years, she only had one more child, a boy, Gibeon Henry William (my uncle), after six years. Grandfather did the China Run. It was a long time. Endless. Life was hard but people stayed together.

She gave up millinery when she got married in 1898. Then my mother was born, so she looked after her. She had brothers and sisters and they all visited each other for cups of tea. She had one brother who went down and lived in Sittingbourne in Kent.

My mother was about 12 when my grandfather’s brother and sister died quite quickly of tuberculosis. My grandmother was worried about my mother ‘going into a decline’, as they say. She sent her to Sittingbourne and she lived there for a year in the country air and atmosphere.

WILLIAM

Joy also tells us more about William:

My grandfather, William, was already in the navy when the war started. He did a six year apprenticeship and then went straight into the navy. He was a trained shipwright. He adored Jessie, as she was a bit of a tomboy. My uncle came along and he was very gentle. He fell when he was about 3 and broke his arm, and Jessie said that the sun never shone on him. He was cosseted because he had broken his arm.

My mother would miss her father terribly – the separations – but my grandmother had another sister whose husband was in the navy. He sadly went down with his ship at the Battle of Jutland, so they would have been commiserating with her and helping her. They all knew each other and all lived in Portsmouth.

Latterly, my mother and uncle always spoke about what a happy childhood they had. There was no poverty, as William and Jessie had been able to buy a house in a nice part of Portsmouth. They did not have a car, but then again, who did?

The big incident I remember from my mother and grandmother was that my grandmother, Jessie, was widowed right at the end of the war. Grandfather died, not in the war, but due to circumstances from the war and she qualified for a pension.

HMS Irresistible

My grandfather was in the war on HMS Irresistible, which was what they called a battle cruiser in those days. He was in the Battle of Gallipoli against Turkey and Russia and the ship was in the Dardanelles, which was a channel from the Aegean and the Sea of Marmaris. There was fighting on one side of Gallipoli and his ship was sunk by a mine. I think he survived, together with the ship’s dog and quite a few of the crew [150 men were killed when the ship sank on 18 March 1915, after hitting a mine].

Subsequently, he came home and then he was in coastal forces and was stationed in Dover. Every now and again, when my grandfather came in to Dover, my mother and my nana, Jessie, and my uncle were able to go there and spend two or three weeks with him.

My mother used to tell me about how the big guns opened up from Calais. I think one was called ‘Big Bertha’. They would always run and go in the shelters, which were in Dover Rocks in Dover Castle, and thereby survive. It was a bit traumatic at the time for them.

Butter Ration

They came through the war. My mother always remembered giving up the butter ration for my nana, because she did not like margarine.

So, my grandmother Jessie had quite a comfortable existence as a military wife. She would be living on a chief petty officer’s pay, which would be good for those days, and living in their own home with the two children. If the war had not come along they might have gone abroad, because occasionally wives and families went.

His grave is actually in Milton Cemetery, I believe. It is a war grave, kept in nice condition.

Apoplexy

The story is that they went to a funeral at Milton Cemetery. There was a grave alongside the grave of the person whose funeral they had attended, newly dug ready for somebody. My grandfather said, ‘Oh look, there is a grave there. Some poor bugger is going to go into that.’

It turned out to be him, because he died here in Portsmouth in the Sailors’ Rest. We had a very big Sailors’ Rest, which was near the town station. He was going back from leave and he didn’t feel well. So he put himself in there for a night. His cabin was up the top of the building. In the morning, the room attendant went to get him up but could hear this very strong, heavy breathing. The management opened up and he was unconscious. They took him into the Royal Naval Barracks and he died. Apoplexy was the word they used. A stroke. He was a big man.

Jessie had a nice house in Kirby Road in Portsmouth. It was a biggish house. She had a good widow’s pension. She was able to let some of the house and so she seemed to be comfortably off. She was a smart lady, a very nice cook and she seemed to have a boyfriend now and again. Someone usually with a car. As grandchildren we benefitted from that. My grandfather was only 45 when he died, so my grandmother was not old when she was widowed. She lived until she was 94. She did not remarry, but one of her gentleman friends used to come and visit two ladies she had let a room to. This gentleman subsequently became her partner. She did not marry, because she would have lost her pension. His name was William Hale. He had a nephew who lived in Lincoln and he used to come down and visit from time to time. In 1945, I married the nephew!

LILY HANNAH PAYNE

The author had the good fortune to bump into a family history researcher in the course of her work on this book. Wendi Friend had been working with the Leahy family in trying to trace information on a young man who was engaged to Lily Hannah Payne during the First World War. Subsequent to this meeting, two members of the family, Christopher, Lily’s grandson, and Eve, his wife, were able to fill out more of Lily’s story, and, finally, Lily’s daughter, Olive, shed more light on this wartime romance and what happened to the pair. Many records were lost during the Second World War and so, at the time of writing, the family are still engaged in research.

Christopher begins the story:

My grandmother grew up in a little village called Anstey, in North Hertfordshire. She was a school teacher in the village and was one of nine children. She was born Lily Hannah Cattley. She was engaged to Frederick Alexander Cook, who was named after his father, but everyone knew him as Alexander Cook. He was 20 when he was killed on Boxing Day, 1916.

Premonition

She got the bad news. It turned out that Lily Hannah was also a friend of Ernest Payne, possibly having met both he and Alex when she was a land girl. Before he went off to war, Ernest had said to Alex, ‘You won’t marry Lily, but I will. You might be engaged to her, but you will not marry her.’ It seemed to have been some kind of a premonition …

Wendi Friend came to assist the family, as they had been trying to find details of Lily’s fiancé without success. They had been under the mistaken assumption that his name was Alexander Cook. Trips to cemeteries in France drew a blank, but Wendi was able to find out why the family could not find him. She takes up the story:

He was born in Watford, Hertfordshire, on the war records, but on the 1911 census it showed he was born in Bishop’s Waltham, Hampshire. We think he was born in Watford and then the family moved to Bishop’s Waltham. His parents, Frederick William and Rosetta Cook, went on to have two more sons. We found that he is in Le Touret Military Cemetery, Richebourg-l’Avoué, Pas de Calais. He was a corporal and had been mentioned in dispatches. His Army Serial Number was 87427Y and he was part of the 5th Battalion, Royal Field Artillery.

Alex was a dispatch rider. His father was a domestic gardener. At 14 he was described as the ‘domestic garden boy’. He went to France on 27 July 1915. In the same cemetery, buried next to him, is George Edward Kingsley Bemand, second lieutenant, Royal Field Artillery, who also died on 26 December 1916. His name appears in both the University of London Officer Training Corps (OTC) and the Roll of the Fallen, in which the citation reads:

2nd Lt Royal Field Art attach trench mortar battery University College, son of Mr G. Bemand of Jamaica, killed in action on 26 Dec 1916 buried in La Touret.

Wendi says, ‘He was one of the first black officers. We think he was Alex’s commanding officer. University College London records George Bemand’s death as killed by a shell near Bethune on 26 December 1916. Both were killed at the same time.’

Lily’s daughter, Olive, takes up the tale:

When I was a little girl, I can remember one Boxing Day mum was very sad. I said, ‘Mum, why are you so sad?’

She said, ‘I was just thinking of my Alex.’

‘Who was Alex?’

‘He was the man I was engaged to be married to. He was killed on Boxing Day.’

I was sorry about it as she obviously adored him, the same as she adored my father. She went on to tell me that Alex was a gardener. I thought she said a head gardener at one of the big houses in Middlesex. I think dad worked with him. I imagined Alex to be older than he turned out to be. He could only have been a lad, as dad went to war when he was 17. He put his age up.

Granny Cook

We know that she used to go to Bishop’s Waltham to visit Alexander’s mother who was known as ‘Granny Cook’ but we don’t know how she got there – by train? After Alex died, Granny Cook used to send boxes of flowers to Lily Hannah, because she had the most beautiful cottage garden. Inside, under the flowers, there was sometimes cash and it was always at a time when Lily Hannah was really desperate for money.

Alex’s friend, Ernest Payne, spent the First World War in Darjeeling, India.

Mum must have continued to write to dad after losing Alex. When dad was coming back from India in 1919, he wrote to her [saying], ‘Lily, I’m bringing the lace for your wedding dress and your bridesmaid’s dresses – Indian lace’.That is what he did. Whether that was his proposal, I don’t know, but they married in the June in the eleventh-century village church in Anstey. The wedding dress was later cut up to make dresses for my three elder sisters, Sylvia, Daphne and Patricia.

I remember asking my mother about my name, Olive, when I was little. I was the last, number eight, of the children, nine if you include the first stillborn child (Alexander, named after mother’s Alex). The others all had pretty names, why hadn’t I? Was I adopted? ‘Of course not, why ever do you ask such a thing?’ she said.

‘My brothers and sisters have nice names and I haven’t.’

‘Olive Joy,’ she said. ‘What nicer name could you have? Olive for peace and Joy for love. What better?’

A few years ago, my brother Ray and I went to Anstey to see where our mother grew up. The first place we went to was the pub. We went in and the locals all stopped speaking and looked at us. Then one said, ‘Lily Hannah!’ to me. I am the image of her, apparently. We met one of Lily’s cousins and went on to the church. It was such a lovely feeling. I don’t remember being there before, but knowing that mum and dad got married there and that all four of their girls were christened there was nice.

STELLA BAILEY – 1920S NAVAL WIFE

The author’s grandmother, Stella May Bailey, died in 2000. However, she had spoken to the author on many occasions about her life as a military wife and some of her memories are given here.

Her husband, Frederick Walter Bailey, born in 1906, was a seaman in the Royal Navy, having run away to sea to become a boy sailor in 1921 at the age of 15. He served on a number of training establishments and ships in his twelve years of service, including HMS Ganges, HMS Courageous, HMS Carlisle (which was stationed in China for a number of years), HMS Victory I and HMS Foxglove.

They married in 1929, and Fred was invalided out of the navy while still a young man after falling overboard in China, into a Portuguese man o’ war floating in the water by the ship. He damaged his leg in the fall, and that and the stings from the jellyfish put him in a Chinese hospital for several months.

Great Fun!

Stella said:

Fred and I were cousins. He was great fun. I remember being on the back of his bike and whizzing down the hill on it with him. His three spinster sisters were at the bottom and they looked down their noses at me for doing that.

I worked at the bank, checking banknotes, before I was married. Then Fred and I got married and things changed. Married women did not hold jobs then. I became a housewife.

You never had ‘married quarters’ in my day. We lived in digs, a single rented room to start with.

I waved my Fred off and did not see him again for two years. He went off on the China Run.

2

ANOTHER WORLD WAR

Make the most of what you have and get on with it.

Gladys Curtis, Second World War military wife, on how she got through the war years.

Britain was at war again. Men were either volunteering for war service or were being called to arms. Once again, the country’s women were stepping in to take the place of their menfolk.

Winifred Deahl, although not a military wife, still found that it was she who had to keep the family café in Southampton afloat during the crisis. She was worried about getting provisions for the business, as her diary entry for 1941 shows:

Wednesday 28 March

Meat rations went down to 1/- per head per week instead of 1/2d per head.

Went to the food office about some cooking fats for the business. Meat has been cut again for the business.

Meanwhile, military wives were coping as best they could in the national emergency.

GLADYS CURTIS

Gladys had been married to Leslie Curtis for a year when the Second World War broke out. Born during the early part of the First World War, and not recognising her father when he came home, she was soon to experience the pain of separation that had been her mother’s lot:

First World War Legacy

My mother was a military wife. She was apprenticed to a milliner before she married but didn’t work after her marriage. My father was in the Royal Artillery as a gunner. He was in France for a long time in the First World War. They used gas in those days. I don’t know too many details about it but he was in a gas attack. He used to get lots of spots on his hands, and I can remember them talking – they didn’t talk to us children like they do today, children were seen and not heard – saying it was some of the gas that was left in his system. Still, he lived until he was 85, so it didn’t do him a lot of harm.

I was only 3 when the war ended. I have been given the impression that I was a bit off with my dad. He was a stranger. He came home when the war ended and I wouldn’t have much to do with him.

Meeting Les

My husband, Les, was from Southampton, as am I. We both belonged to what today would be called a youth club. When we were in our teens we went along. I was about 17 when we met. He was born in May 1915 and me in September 1915. My in-laws had a shop in Shirley. A fruit and flowers shop – a family business.

His life was queer because he never had any money. The family as a whole did very well. They lived on the premises, in the flat over the shop. All the bills were paid by mum and dad. They even bought him his clothes. When I met him, in 1932, I had about 2s pocket money a week, but he didn’t have any money. Anything he wanted, he just went to dad and said. If he wanted to buy something it came out of the till. When we got engaged, he said to his dad, ‘Can I have a wage?’

‘What do you want a wage for?’

‘Well, I might want to have some money.’

‘Your mother and I buy everything for you, you don’t need money.’

They wouldn’t give him a wage. We wanted to save up to get married. Eventually, his father came around and he gave him 10s [50p] a week. It was a lot of money then. It wasn’t until we were married that he had a proper wage and then it was £3 a week. He had a mortgage on £3!

I gave up work the week before we got married, in 1938. In September 1938 we were married, September 1939 war was declared and in November 1939 Jonathan [known as John] was born. So we had just one year of married life.

I was very naïve in those days. Not worldly wise at all. I was 23. We led a very sheltered life. You lived at home with your parents until you were married. We were engaged to be married, but we weren’t allowed to go on holiday alone together. We did go away – we had family friends in Dartmouth, on the coast, who had a pub and we went there for a holiday. Of course, we had separate rooms. Then we were watched to make sure there was no hanky-panky! Girls today would be horrified.

Les, the Volunteer

When the war started, Les volunteered. As a child he’d had diphtheria twice, which was very unusual, and it had left him, so the medical profession said, with a weak heart. When he was at school he was not allowed to play football.

When war came he hated the thought of actually going to war. He wasn’t a bit belligerent, but he was worried that if he waited until he was conscripted, he would be put in the army infantry and given a bayonet and sent to the front. He couldn’t imagine sticking a bayonet into someone. He couldn’t bear the thought. He thought that if he volunteered they would give the volunteers more choice of where they went.

I remember his dad saying, ‘Don’t worry, they won’t take him with his heart. If they take him into the services they will give him a job in an office, not to worry.’ He went for his interview and came home, went for his medical and they passed him, A1!

I was worried. I didn’t want him to go. I listened to my father-in-law and so I thought that he would be around, it would not make any difference. John was a tiny baby, a weakly baby, and he was in hospital. He’d been there for two months, from when he was 2 months old. The day before he came out of hospital, my husband got his calling-up papers and he went off to be in the army. He was taken on to be a driver. He loved driving. He was attached to the medical corps and became an ambulance driver, which was a bit ironic as he couldn’t stand the sight of blood!

I was more concerned with John. He was 8lb when he was born and when he came out of hospital at 4 months, he weighed 6lb. He was a bag of bones, he was my first child and I was terrified. No husband around either. The hospital consultant that I saw said that I had better bring him home now.

‘I don’t think I can look after him.’

‘Oh, yes, you will. He’ll be safer at home with you rather than in hospital in wartime with germs. If he catches anything, he won’t live. He has no stamina. You want to keep him wrapped in cotton wool. Don’t let anybody who has a cold near him.’

There was me, scared stiff.

I coped. I got over it. Thousands of people, everyone, had a tough time. It was the worst time in my whole life financially, and I am nearly 100 now. When I lived at home with my parents, there was not a lot of money, but they had enough and I was happy. I was okay when I got married because my in-laws had a bit of money, but there was a period when I was getting little money, just army pay, and there was hardly enough money to pay the bills.

I was a bit naïve. I had never had to do things. I had no experience to cope on my own. Then, suddenly, I was on my own with not much money coming in and a poorly baby. My mother still lived in Southampton then, but eventually moved. She was the other side of Southampton and we didn’t have any phones or anything. Everything was chaotic. It was hard. I lived in Millbrook and the shop was in Shirley, opposite Woolworth’s.

I spent my days looking after John; he was so weak. People would look at him and say, ‘Oh, I don’t think he will last very long’. He was christened at hospital before my husband left because we didn’t think he was going to last. For two months I went back to work. The dairy I had once worked at was short staffed as people had been called up. They asked me if I would go back. It was in the same area as the hospital so I could nip up whenever I wanted to. I couldn’t do anything. They wouldn’t allow me to pick him up. So I could only go and stand and look at him in the cot – this bag of bones.

For the first week he was home from hospital I had to put him in his pram and take him up to the hospital for the nurse to dress the wound. From Millbrook to Shirley is half an hour’s walk. We had no car. There they made a fuss of him, and after I had done this for about a week the consultant decided it would be better if I did it myself. They didn’t put any stiches in. He had this great big cut, he still has the scar. He had reflux and was bringing food back and it was not going into his stomach. He would throw it all up.

This little boy did not have any flesh on him at all. He looked like he would break if you touched him and he had this great big gash in his tummy and I had to clean it and put a fresh dressing on it. That used to take me nearly all the morning. We had a great big dining room with a suite that was really huge. I used to pull the table out and put a cushion right in the middle. He couldn’t have fallen off, he was so weak. We didn’t have the equipment you have these days – I put a towel on the table and laid him on there. Then I did his wound. From then on, he got better in leaps and bounds.

For two or three months it was touch and go, but once he got going and he could keep his food down, he was fine. I have pictures of him when he is 1 year old and he is quite a robust child. It was getting through it on my own, which was the point.

Les joined the army in early 1940 and was in England for a year, doing his training in the Midlands. He could drive anything, lorries – even a tank. He ended up driving an ambulance. They didn’t give them leave very much. Once he came home for two or three days. He came home for overseas leave for one night, and then he went overseas. Of course, we never saw him again until the war was over.

Rommel was the German commander who was doing very well in Tobruk and all around there. The next thing we knew, he was missing. I had messages from the Red Cross with information. It was just the news that he was missing, believed taken prisoner. In fact, he was with loads of others.

The first prisoner of war camp that Les went in was in Italy, in Verona. About sixteen years after the war finished, we took a holiday and drove through France and Switzerland to Italy. We had a few days at Rimini. While we were there, he said that he would like to go to Verona and see if anything remained of the camp. We drove there. It was very small then, quite a poor little village.

We stopped, and he got out of the car and there was a house very near. Somebody was watching, and suddenly a window opened and a little man looked out and shouted, ‘Luigi!’ – Italian for Leslie. Then he went off speaking Italian. Les picked up a bit of Italian when he was there. He said, ‘He is telling me to wait.’ So we waited and he came down and he was so excited. Fancy him remembering a prisoner of war! There were loads of prisoners, but he remembered Les after all that time, he still looked the same. The man took us around the village and introduced us to all his friends. He was so excited. The family took us into the house and gave us drinks and things.

Gladys Curtis still has the letter Leslie Curtis sent to the War Office, to explain his war time exploits. He was taken prisoner near Tobruk in June 1942 and sent to Southern Italy in October 1942. In May 1943 he was sent to a working camp in Verona. His guards released him in September 1943 and he hid for two months with an Italian family until he was given away and recaptured. He promptly escaped again and for two months attempted to reach the safety of Switzerland. He was caught again in February 1944 and in March was sent to Germany by train. He escaped by pulling up the carriage’s floorboards and dropping on to the tracks and was again in hiding for two months. In May 1944 he was caught and this time was transferred to Germany, where he remained until the end of the war.

To:

The Deputy of Military Intelligence,

War Office, Room 327,

Hotel Victoria

Northumberland Avenue,

LONDON. WC2                            29th December, 1945.

Dear Sir,

    Replying to your letter, dated 1*/12/45, Ref.MI.9/Gen/79848, the information for which you ask is detailed below:

June, 1942.              Taken prisoner at Regal Ridge, Nr. Tobruck.

October, 1942.        Transferred to Southern Italy.

May, 1943.              Sent to working camp No.148/4, Verona.

September, 1943.    Released by Italian guards and remained in hiding with an Italian family:-

ZORELLA SILVIC,

S.MARIA DI ZEVIO VOLON,

VERONA.

    for two months. Information was given to the Germans by persons unknown but I successfully escaped, with four friends (whose regimental details are unknown) to the mountains where we wandered for approximately two months in an endeavour to reach Switzerland.

February, 1944.       Picked up by patrol and taken to Padina.

March, 1944.        Commenced journey to Germany by train in locked coach with 38 other prisoners one guard outside at each end. Escaped by removing floor boards, approx. speed of the train 8 miles per hour. Remained in hiding with Italians near Mestra (name and address unknown) for 2 months.

May, 1944.          Information given to the enemy and I was recaptured and eventually taken to Germany.

Yours faithfully,

L. Curtis,

Vulcan House

Southampton

Rations

There was nothing to buy during the war. We had our rations. We used to have a programme on the radio, The Kitchen Front. Lord Woolton [Frederick Marquis, 1st Earl of Woolton, 1883–1964] was the food minister and it was Lord Wootton’s recipes that we used to listen to, taking into account the rations. How to make cake without using any fat, that sort of thing.

Bananas were very thin on the ground. We were lucky because of the shop. Bananas weren’t rationed but they were allocated to the shops and the shopkeepers were asked not to let anybody have them who didn’t have children. My father-in-law used to get the bananas out and would have a huge queue a mile back. Before he put them out he always put some bananas to one side for John, so I didn’t have to queue. John liked his bananas, but it was only perhaps once a year we’d get them.

Then I found a sandwich recipe, it must have been this Woolton. ‘How to make a banana sandwich’: You got some parsnips and cooked them. You must have cooked any goodness in them out as you boiled them for ages, until they were really soft and mushy. Then you mashed them like you do mashed potatoes. For some reason, I don’t know where it came from, but we could get a little bottle of banana essence and honestly, when you took the lid off, the smell of bananas was really potent. You put a few drops of this banana on the parsnip and then mash it up. Then you get, I was going to say bread and butter but we didn’t have butter, bread and a scraping of margarine. You spread the ‘banana’ on and John had it for his tea, banana sandwich. He often used to ask for it.

We used to have a thing called a Woolton pie and that was a joke in the war. [Created by Maître Chef de Cuisine at the Savoy Hotel, Francis Latry, the recipe was first published in the Times