GI Brides: The Wartime Girls Who Crossed the Atlantic for Love

by Barrett, Duncan; Calvi, Nuala

  The sight of Mrs Bradley hitching up her skirts and legging it up the road had them all in stitches again, and even Sylvia’s usually reserved father had to clutch his belly with laughter.

  Wally was transferred soon after, but he wrote to Sylvia, ‘I can still hear your mother’s voice in my head, singing “Swanee” on the “loo”. I don’t think I’ll ever forget that evening.’

  Sylvia read the letter aloud to her mother, who was tickled pink at her conquest.

  After that, Mrs Bradley even began bringing home soldiers for her daughter herself. ‘This is Frank Dunphy,’ she announced when she got home one evening, introducing an English soldier quite a bit older than Sylvia. Frank accompanied the Bradleys to the pub, and after that took Sylvia to the pictures a few times. She didn’t mind – since he was older than her, it felt a bit like having a big brother around. Frank came from Nottingham, and one day he mentioned that he had some leave coming up and was planning to go back and visit his mum. ‘Would you like to come with me?’ he asked.

  Sylvia had never been to Nottingham before, and thought it might be fun to see a new place. ‘All right then, why not?’ she replied.

  They took the train up that weekend, and had a pleasant time with Frank’s mother, who seemed very pleased to meet Sylvia. ‘Your mum’s nice,’ she said, once they were back on the train.

  ‘Oh, I’m so glad you liked her,’ replied Frank, ‘because when we’re married I thought we could –’

  ‘When we’re what?’ asked Sylvia in surprise.

  ‘When we’re married. We are getting married, aren’t we?’

  Sylvia thought back to Mrs Dunphy’s eagerness to meet her, and it suddenly dawned on her that the whole trip had been arranged with very different intentions to those she had imagined.

  ‘Frank, you’re like my big brother,’ she told him, feeling terrible as she saw the disappointment on his face. ‘I like you and all that, but I can’t marry you.’

  ‘Well,’ Frank replied, ‘I’m going to keep on trying.’

  Unfortunately, they were only halfway back to London, and Sylvia had to endure the rest of the awkward train ride with him.

  When Frank was sent to Africa, he wrote to Sylvia constantly, and to her surprise so did one of his friends, Tom, whom she had met only briefly in London through Frank. She now had several soldier pen pals and kept up the correspondence religiously, feeling she couldn’t let the boys down in their hour of need.

  So far, Sylvia had enjoyed her dates, but most of the men she had gone out with she regarded, like Frank, as little more than brothers. One day, however, a young sailor walked into the Red Cross club who changed all that.

  She spotted Carl Russell immediately. With his flame-red hair he was hard to miss, and he was clearly the comedian of his group, doing all the talking as his fellow sailors laughed at his jokes. He didn’t look much older than her – around eighteen or nineteen – and he had a big smile that made her feel warm all over.

  Sylvia was used to being watched as she went about her work, but this time, it was she who was looking on longingly. After a while Carl noticed her and came over. ‘Would you like to go out with me?’ he asked, confidently.

  ‘Oh, yes,’ she replied, blushing at the idea that he had guessed her thought.

  ‘You know what I’d like to do?’ he said. ‘I’d like to visit one of your English tea rooms. I’ve never done that before!’

  Sylvia knew there was a Lyons Corner House close to Charing Cross station, where she took the train home every day, so she suggested they go there. As she sat drinking tea with ‘Red’, as his friends called him, he told her about his hometown of Boston.

  ‘So, do they drink tea where you come from?’ asked Sylvia. She had noticed at the American Red Cross club the men always seemed to drink coffee.

  ‘Oh, sure,’ replied Carl, smiling. ‘We had a pretty famous tea party in Boston in 1773!’

  Carl was just a regular sailor, but he was from a wealthy background, and lived in the exclusive Beacon Hill district. Sylvia knew a rich Englishman would be unlikely to take her out to tea, but the Americans were oblivious to distinctions of English social class and treated all girls they liked equally. Carl seemed fascinated to hear all about her life in Woolwich and her job at the Piccadilly Hotel. He was intelligent and lively, and Sylvia couldn’t help feeling she was having a much more interesting time with him than she had with her previous dates.

  When he kissed her goodbye at the station she felt tingly all over, and as she rode the train back to Woolwich she couldn’t stop smiling.

  Carl was a cultured young man, and the next time they met up he insisted on taking her to the National Gallery in Trafalgar Square. Sylvia had never been to a gallery before, but she didn’t want to seem unsophisticated, so she agreed to go.

  The experience proved to be something of a disappointment, however. The gallery had been hit several times in the Blitz – in one case killing seven people – and its paintings had been evacuated to secret locations in Wales and Gloucestershire to keep them safe. Its rooms were all empty, except for a special reinforced chamber that was showing a single ‘Picture of the Month’ – in this case, Velázquez’s The Rokeby Venus.

  Sylvia was rather shocked at the sight of the lady’s pink, bare buttocks, but Carl seemed to be transfixed. ‘Isn’t she beautiful?’ he sighed.

  ‘I suppose so,’ Sylvia replied.

  Carl turned to her. ‘But not as beautiful as you,’ he said.

  Sylvia’s dates with Carl quickly became the highlight of her week, and she always felt a rush of excitement when she spotted his red hair out of the window of the Piccadilly Hotel, as he waited for her after work. But the ritual visit to Woolwich beckoned, so that Mrs Bradley could meet him. This time Sylvia found herself unusually anxious that her mother should like her date, but to her relief they hit it off immediately.

  At the end of the evening they were sitting in the living room, when Mrs Bradley announced, ‘Well, I’m off to bed. Don’t stay up too long, now.’

  As soon as she was gone, Sylvia slipped onto Carl’s lap and they started kissing. After about ten minutes, she had to jump off hurriedly as Mrs Bradley bustled back into the room.

  ‘I forgot to bank the fire,’ she said, walking over to the fireplace.

  ‘You just did that!’ Sylvia said.

  ‘Oh, yes,’ her mother muttered. ‘So I did.’

  She bustled out again, and Sylvia sidled back up to Carl. No sooner had they resumed kissing than her mother came barging into the room for a second time.

  ‘Did I lock the back door?’ she enquired of her daughter.

  ‘I don’t know, Mum,’ Sylvia said, trying to suppress her frustration. ‘Did you?’

  ‘I’ll just go and look,’ said Mrs Bradley, and off she went.

  Ten minutes later, Mrs Bradley came downstairs again, telling them loudly that she was going out the back to use the loo. Clearly there was going to be no privacy this evening, so Carl soon left.

  Mrs Bradley’s tactics had got the desired result, but as she lay in bed that night her mind was still not at rest. For the first time, she had seen her daughter truly smitten, and she knew that no umbrella could protect her Sylvie once she had given her heart.

  One day, after Sylvia and Carl had been dating a month, he came into the Washington Club while she was on her shift. At the sight of his red hair, her heart skipped a beat, and she immediately put down the plates she was taking to the kitchen and rushed over to greet him.

  But the look on his normally cheery face told her he was not there for fun. ‘I’ve come to say goodbye,’ he said. ‘I’m being sent away for training. They won’t tell us where we’re going, but I’ll be gone a while.’

  Sylvia couldn’t believe it. She had only just found a GI she really liked, and after a few short weeks together now he was to be snatched away.

  Tears ran down her face as Carl gave her a final, lingering kiss. ‘Don’t forget to write me,’ he said, as he t
urned to leave. ‘And have a pot of tea ready for me when I come back!’

  Sylvia nodded, too upset to reply.

  6

  Rae

  Having waited outside her billet week after week, Rae’s GI admirer had finally worn down her resistance and got the date he wanted. After this small encouragement Raymond’s unannounced arrivals continued with the same frequency, and she got into the habit of letting him accompany her to the movies. It wasn’t much more than that – a habit – and she always made sure to walk off briskly at the end of the night before he had a chance to linger on the doorstep.

  But one night, Raymond confronted her. ‘Rae, do you know how many times we’ve been out now?’

  ‘I haven’t been keeping count,’ she retorted.

  ‘Well, it’s been five dates, and you’ve never given me a goodnight kiss!’

  Rae couldn’t help laughing at his hang-dog expression. ‘Oh, go on then,’ she said. An eighteen-year-old tomboy, she had never been kissed before. Why not get it over and done with?

  At six foot two, Raymond had to lean over quite some way, but he took her in his arms and kissed her passionately. Rae found it a strange and not particularly pleasant experience.

  However, after that there was no point pretending they weren’t a couple. ‘Why don’t you invite him round for Sunday lunch?’ suggested her housemate, Irene, who had also started dating a GI. Having an American at the table always guaranteed a better meal, since their food was shipped in from the States.

  Raymond was a cook at a nearby US general hospital, and before the meal he made sure to sneak out some tins of turkey meat. The ATS girls were ecstatic when he turned up with this bounty, and devoured their turkey on toast. He also brought them glossy American magazines, which they kept under their mattresses.

  Raymond was soon being invited to join them on nights out, and although he wasn’t a dancer he was happy to stand at the bar and watch Rae dance. Her friends joked that he didn’t seem to be able to take his eyes off her, and she could see they had quickly taken to his easy-going personality. Among his own friends in the US Army, Raymond was nicknamed ‘Hap’, because he seemed so happy all the time. The two of them quickly acquired a new moniker: Big Ray and Little Rae.

  Rae liked it that Raymond was tall and manly – she would never have been able to date a puny guy – and the fact that he was ten years older than herself, and in the Army like her own poor dad had been, made him feel a little like a father figure. She also found his persistence reassuring. ‘I love you, Rae,’ he told her over and over again, and although she never said it back, each time she felt a little fonder of him.

  Raymond always made sure to walk Rae home at the end of an evening, stopping along the way for fish and chips – a delicacy unheard of in America – and as they strolled back to her billet he would tell her all about his life in Pennsylvania. He came from a small community called Hackett, not far from Pittsburgh, and like the rest of his family he had worked in the local coal mine since he left school. To Rae, who had grown up in London, coal-mining was an alien world, but she was pleased that he was from an ordinary, hard-working family like her own. She remembered the bragging Yank who had shown her a picture of a hotel in Florida and claimed it was his house, and appreciated Raymond’s honesty about his humble background.

  But while Raymond was winning over Rae and her friends, there was another group of people who she knew would be less easy to convince: her family. Given her brothers’ dislike of the GIs, she had so far kept the relationship a secret.

  She knew that her mother had recently put paid to her sister Mary’s relationship with her boyfriend Bob. Having got a ‘funny feeling’ that he was married, Mrs Burton had taken her tallest son round to confront him. When Bob admitted that her suspicions were correct, she had told him, ‘You stay away from my daughter. Here’s my son, and I’ve got two more just like him, so don’t you even try to come near us!’

  As the weeks and months went by, Big Ray and Little Rae grew closer and closer, but she continued to put off mentioning him whenever she wrote to her mother. In any case, Mrs Burton had more pressing worries. After her ‘funny feeling’ about Mary’s boyfriend had turned out to be correct, she had begun to trust her intuition more and more. Now it was telling her that her own husband wasn’t being faithful.

  During his long shifts with the military police, guarding ‘vulnerable points’, Rae’s stepfather had been eyeing up his own target, a much younger woman in the ATS. When the girl had taken him home to meet her parents, they had been surprised to meet a man their own age. But they liked Mr Burton and willingly gave him their daughter’s hand in marriage, little knowing that he already had a wife and family.

  ‘He’s being tried for bigamy,’ Rae’s distraught mother wrote to her, ‘at the Old Bailey.’

  Rae was furious. She got leave to return to London for the court case, and made sure she was there to hold her mother’s hand as they watched the man who had been a father to her for more than a decade stand in the dock. Mr Burton argued that he had only married his mistress because she had fallen pregnant, and with a good character witness from his officer he avoided jail. But Rae’s mother refused to give him the satisfaction of a divorce, and he and his ATS girl lived out the rest of their days unmarried.

  Back in Mansfield, Big Ray and Little Rae’s weekly dates continued, always followed by a visit to the fish-and-chip shop. One day, they were sitting in the pub when Raymond drew something out of his pocket.

  ‘Would you accept this?’ he asked her.

  He was holding a large gold ring with five stones in it. Five stones meant five words: Will You Be My Wife?

  Rae was completely taken aback. Marriage had never crossed her mind in their months of dating, and she’d had no thoughts of the future whatsoever. What was the point, when no one knew how long the war would rumble on – or what the eventual outcome would be? She and Raymond could both be dead by tomorrow.

  But she liked him, and all she knew at this point in time was that she wanted to carry on being with him.

  ‘Yes,’ she said, a little surprised at herself.

  Now that they were engaged, there was no way Rae could continue to keep the relationship a secret, so finally she wrote to her mother. An anxious reply came back: ‘Are you sure you know what you’re doing?’

  There was only one way to convince Mrs Burton. The following month, they took a train to London so that Raymond could meet her, as well as Rae’s sister Mary. Rae just hoped her mother’s intuition didn’t give her another ‘funny feeling’.

  Raymond came armed with several tins of turkey and some much-coveted butter. To Rae’s relief her mother seemed to like him, although she did repeat the question, ‘Are you sure you know what you’re doing?’ as soon as he left the room.

  But throughout dinner Rae noticed that her sister seemed a little quiet, and as she helped her take the plates out to the kitchen she asked her what was on her mind.

  ‘I’m just not sure about him, Rae,’ she said. ‘I don’t know why.’

  Rae soon discovered that family introductions were only the first hurdle. The US Army was not keen on its soldiers marrying while on duty abroad, and the process of obtaining permission to wed was an elaborate one. A commanding officer had to approve the application, and write a letter to the civil or church authority who would conduct the marriage, having interviewed the GI in question. The potential bride was also subject to questioning, usually by an army chaplain, and was required to provide character references. The Army did its best to dissuade prospective brides, who were often accused of using marriage as a ticket to a more prosperous country. Meanwhile, checks were made into any dependants of the GI in the US, to ensure that the husband could afford to keep his new wife. Unsurprisingly, the process often took many months, but any GI caught violating the Army’s strict procedures was subject to a court martial.

  Rae set about accumulating the necessary paperwork for her marriage to go through smoothly. Her
captain provided a character reference, and even agreed to walk her down the aisle. Rae’s housemate Eileen, the colonel’s chauffeur, and Nancy, a girl from the storage depot, were to be bridesmaids.

  But despite all their work, Rae and Raymond were told it would take at least six months for the Army to process their application. In a war, that seemed as bad as six years. Then there was worse news: Rae received notice that she was being transferred to a workshop in Buntingford, more than a hundred miles away.

  That was the last straw. Raymond went straight to his commanding officer. ‘I need special permission to get married quickly,’ he said.

  The CO looked at him knowingly. ‘Is your girlfriend pregnant?’ he asked. That was normally the reason for such requests.

  ‘No!’ laughed Raymond. ‘She’s just being transferred.’

  ‘I’ll see what I can do,’ said the other man.

  The wedding was brought forward by three months, giving them just enough time to wed before Rae had to leave, although that meant it would have to take place in chilly January.

  Rae intended to be married in her army uniform, just like Raymond. But he thought there might be something he could do to prevent her wearing the regulation thick cotton ATS stockings on their wedding day. ‘I bought you this,’ he said the next time he visited her, handing her a little box. Inside was a pair of silk stockings, with seams up the back.

  ‘I can’t wear these – they’re not regulation!’ she said.

  ‘Rae, just take them,’ Raymond pleaded.

  The fourth of January 1944 was a cold day, but there was a clear sky and no sign of rain. Entering the church, Rae could see all her ATS friends, as well as some of her male colleagues from the workshop and army friends of Raymond’s. His best man was another cook called Chet, who lived in a town near Raymond’s home in Pennsylvania. As Rae reached the altar, Raymond smiled with relief to see that she had forsaken her thick regulation stockings and was wearing the silk ones he had given her.