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

by Barrett, Duncan; Calvi, Nuala

  ‘Gwendolyn Patrino,’ the girl called out.

  Lyn waited expectantly, but there was no response from the crowd below.

  ‘Gwendolyn Patrino,’ the girl repeated.

  A murmur went around the women still on deck. They think I’m one of those, Lyn realised – the infamous brides whose husbands never show up, destined to live off handouts.

  Lyn wanted to scream that they were wrong, but all she could do was stand there, as the girl moved on to the next name.

  After the other brides had gone, the Red Cross told Lyn to wait onboard while they attempted to get hold of Ben. They were used to husbands not showing up, and had dealt with stranger cases than hers. One woman had arrived to find that her husband had divorced her, but she announced that she had an offer of marriage from another former GI and would like to go and marry him instead. The Red Cross had wired its branch in Sacramento, who contacted the man and wired back to confirm that he was willing to accept the girl. Some war brides, though, seemed to be deliberately working the system – one woman’s alleged husband turned out never to have heard of her.

  Later that day, one of the Red Cross girls told Lyn she had Ben on the line. Lyn rushed with her to the office and clutched the receiver to her ear.

  ‘Lyn, are you there?’ he said.

  ‘Ben! Where are you?’

  ‘I’m at home in San Jose. I hate to tell you this, but I won’t be able to come and meet you.’

  Lyn felt panicked. ‘What’s happened?’

  ‘Well, my mom says we can’t afford the fare.’

  ‘I see,’ she said guardedly. ‘So what do I do now?’

  ‘The Red Cross are going to put you on a train to California, and I’ll meet you in Oakland,’ he said. ‘It won’t be long now. I think the train should take about four or five days.’

  Four or five days! How could Ben’s mother put her through this, after the journey she’d already endured?

  ‘Will you promise me one thing?’ she pleaded.

  ‘Anything.’

  ‘Come to the station in your army uniform, like I remember you.’

  She recalled the jibes her colleagues had made about her Italian-American turning up in a zoot suit, and she wanted to know they were wrong.

  Lyn spent the night on the ship, and the next morning one of the Red Cross girls told her they had been forced to put her on an army train, since all the special war-bride trains were full. It was leaving late that evening, and she advised Lyn to take the time to rest. Lyn, however, had no intention of doing that when the whole of New York was waiting outside. She disembarked from the boat and hopped in a yellow cab, asking the driver to take her to Saks on Fifth Avenue. She had seen the famous department store in the movies and couldn’t wait to experience it for herself.

  ‘That’s forty-five cents,’ the cab driver told her when he pulled up outside the store. She opened her purse and looked at the jumble of foreign currency inside – even after two weeks on an American boat she still hadn’t got her head around it. She scooped up a handful of coins and held them out to the driver, hoping he was honest.

  Lyn stepped out of the cab and looked around her at the huge buildings forging upwards to the sky. Across the road she saw the soaring tower of the Rockefeller Center, while a little further down the street was the magnificent cathedral of Saint Patrick. New York was more vibrant even than London, but as she watched the brightly coloured cars and smartly dressed people whiz by, she couldn’t help wondering why everyone seemed to be in such a hurry.

  Inside Saks, Lyn made her way to the womenswear department, where she spotted a magnificent fur coat. She tried to take it off the hanger, but found it wouldn’t budge.

  ‘Can I help you, ma’am?’ came a sharp American voice. A smartly dressed sales assistant was walking over quickly.

  ‘I was just going to try this coat on,’ Lyn explained.

  ‘You can’t,’ she said.

  ‘Why not?’

  The woman glared at her. ‘It’s chained up to stop you from stealing it.’

  ‘I didn’t want to steal it!’ Lyn protested. ‘I just wanted to try it on.’

  Her cheeks burning in humiliation, Lyn shoved the coat back onto its hanger and left.

  After walking several blocks, she felt desperate to sit down, and stopped at a café on Lexington Avenue.

  ‘Could I get a cup of tea, please?’ she asked a waiter.

  ‘Coming right up,’ the man replied. Before long a steaming cup was plonked down in front of her.

  But to her surprise it just seemed to be hot water, with a strange brown thing floating in it. ‘Excuse me,’ she said, calling the waiter over, ‘I think there’s something in my cup.’

  ‘Yeah, that’s a tea bag,’ he replied.

  Lyn had never heard the word before. ‘Well, would you take it out and give me a cup of tea?’ she asked.

  ‘You’re a real smart alec, aren’t you?’ he said, and walked off angrily.

  Confused, Lyn left the café and hailed a cab back to the ship. She’d already had more than her fill of the Big Apple.

  As the Red Cross bus pulled up to Grand Central station, it was met by a group of angry-looking women brandishing placards. Lyn peered out of the window and was greeted with the words ‘ENGLISH WHORES GO HOME’. Charming, she thought. It seemed the war brides were about as popular among American women as the GIs had been among British men.

  The brides disembarked and were taken into the train station, where they were held in a kind of pen, with tags around their necks detailing their final destination. Passers-by stopped to stare, and a few asked them to speak so they could hear their strange accents.

  The other brides were soon helped onto official war-bride trains, and Lyn was put on her army train. She found herself sharing a carriage with a group of officers, including a doctor. As the only woman, Lyn felt conspicuous, but the men were kind and the doctor took her under his wing. He told her he was transporting a soldier to a psychiatric hospital in Oakland, to be treated for schizophrenia. ‘Cracked up in France,’ he explained.

  The soldier was held in a small compartment for the entire journey with an armed guard at the door. As Lyn tried to get to sleep that night, she couldn’t help shuddering at the thought of him locked up in there.

  The next day, they arrived in Chicago, where they had to change trains. Then they were on their way again, heading west across the mighty Mississippi. ‘Excuse me,’ Lyn asked the porter as he passed through the carriage. ‘Would you mind knocking me up in the morning? I don’t want to miss anything.’

  The man stared at her for a moment, and then a cheeky smile spread across his face. ‘Sure thing, ma’am,’ he replied.

  Throughout the journey Lyn remained glued to the window, watching the giant continent pass by, hypnotised by mile after mile of lonely, empty space and amazed by how big it was. She saw the landscape outside change, from the corn fields of Iowa to the wild barren prairies of Nebraska. Every night she asked the porter to knock her up in the morning, and every time he would say ‘Yes, ma’am’ with the same cheeky smile.

  When the train pulled into Cheyenne, Wyoming, Lyn was astonished to see an American Indian. He was a member of the Arapaho tribe, and had long dark hair and a traditional necklace. Many war brides viewed their first Indian with fear, having grown up on cowboy movies in which they were wild, scalping villains – one bride had crouched on the floor of her carriage in terror, convinced that a man dancing for some tourists was on the warpath. But Lyn had no such worries and, inquisitive as ever, she took her camera and ran straight up to the man. ‘Excuse me,’ she said. ‘Are you an Indian, like in the movies?’

  ‘I am,’ the man replied solemnly.

  ‘A real Indian?’

  The man nodded.

  ‘Could I take your photograph?’

  ‘No,’ he snapped, and walked off.

  Lyn returned to the train disappointed. ‘That Indian wouldn’t let me take his picture!’ she complained to t
he officers in her carriage.

  ‘That’s their custom,’ one of them replied. ‘They don’t allow photographs.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Lyn. ‘I see.’ But she couldn’t help feeling a little annoyed.

  The train passed through the deserts of Utah and Nevada, until finally Lyn was awoken one morning by the usual knock on her door and told they were now in California. ‘Thank you so much,’ she told the porter. ‘I wanted to give you this.’ She handed him a crisp dollar bill. ‘It’s for knocking me up every morning.’

  The man smiled more than ever. ‘Thank you, ma’am,’ he replied. ‘Oh, and when you see your husband, I want you to tell him that the porter knocked you up every morning, and you gave him a tip for it.’

  ‘All right,’ Lyn replied innocently. ‘I will.’

  The lush California landscape was a welcome change of scene for Lyn after the stark, alien desert of Nevada, but her mind was not really on the scenery. She had travelled nearly 3,000 miles from coast to coast across America, almost as great a distance as she had crossing the Atlantic, and there was only one thing she wanted to see: Ben.

  As the train pulled into Oakland station, she rushed to the door of her carriage, straining to catch a glimpse of her husband on the platform. There he was, clutching a huge bunch of flowers – and he was wearing his old army uniform, just as she had asked.

  Lyn threw open the train door and ran into his arms.

  ‘Thank God you’re finally here,’ he said. Lyn was so overcome with emotion she couldn’t reply.

  ‘Here,’ he said, handing her the flowers. ‘These are to say sorry I wasn’t able to meet you in New York. And I’ve got something else for you.’ He took out a small box containing the engagement and wedding rings that had made their way back and forth across the Atlantic so many times. As he slipped them onto her finger, Lyn wished her old colleagues were there to see that, after all, Ben had proved as good as his word.

  Suddenly the difficulties and insults of her epic journey melted away, and Lyn felt it had all been worth it.

  As Ben began loading her bags into his father’s Buick, a thought struck her. ‘Oh, there’s something I’m meant to tell you,’ she said. ‘The porter on the train knocked me up every morning, and I gave him a good tip for it.’

  Ben’s jaw dropped momentarily, but then he laughed as he realised the misunderstanding. ‘Lyn, whatever you do, don’t tell my parents that!’ he said.

  17

  Rae

  While other war brides were waiting patiently for passage to join their husbands, Rae was secretly beginning to dread the day that she received her orders to sail.

  She had found waiting for the war to end almost unbearable, and even after victory had been declared in Europe it had been another three months before Raymond returned from France. There hadn’t been much time for a proper reunion, however – he had been given two days’ leave to visit her before being shipped back to the States.

  Rae had been shocked to see the husband she had worried about so frantically for fifteen months sitting on the sofa in her house as if nothing had happened. Suddenly, relief had overwhelmed her – now that Raymond was finally with her again, she could accept that the war was well and truly over. For the second time in recent months, the normally tough Rae had burst into tears.

  ‘Hey, aren’t you pleased to see me?’ he had joked, as he put his arms around his sobbing wife.

  When they first met, she had slammed the door in his face every time he turned up at her billet asking for a date. Yet here she was crying on his shoulder. She felt like she had become a different person.

  There had been other changes too. As a welder in the Army, Rae had found an identity and a vocation that suited her, but now she was no longer in uniform. At the end of the war, she and a few other ATS girls had been called into the office at Chilwell and asked if they would like to stay on. Reluctantly, she had turned down the offer – she knew that as a married woman she couldn’t commit to several more years in the Army.

  With Raymond about to leave for America, Rae had been gripped by a new worry. ‘Promise me you won’t go back down the mine,’ she pleaded. ‘It’s too dangerous.’

  ‘Okay, baby,’ he had replied. ‘I’ll get a job at the steel mill instead.’

  As Rae waved him off again, it had suddenly dawned on her that the next time she saw him they would both be in America. When they had married, it had been in the midst of a war that seemed never-ending. She had accepted Raymond’s ring without considering the fact that one day it would mean following him halfway across the world. But now, as she waited for her orders to join him in America, she began to question what she had done. She loved her country passionately – even more so after serving in the forces – and she was also worried about how her mother would cope with her departure. The family had been disrupted so many times already – by death, by the war and by her stepfather’s betrayal. The thought of leaving them now was intolerable.

  By the time her orders to travel finally came, Rae had found an excuse to stall her departure. She wrote to Raymond telling him that her sister Liz was about to give birth, and she had offered to help out until she had the baby. In the meantime, she had requested a delay from the US Army.

  Raymond accepted the disappointing news, and Rae moved in with Liz. She was there when she went into labour, helping the midwife deliver the baby. Raymond sent his congratulations, and asked if Rae would now be ready to leave. But she replied that she couldn’t possibly leave Liz now, in the early days of motherhood, when she needed her help the most.

  As the weeks slipped by, the normally laid-back Raymond sounded more and more uneasy in his letters. ‘When are you coming?’ he kept demanding, but all he received were updates on the baby’s progress.

  Eventually, Rae’s mother confronted her, and asked what was going on.

  ‘I don’t want to go to America, Mum!’ Rae blurted out.

  Mrs Burton didn’t want her daughter to leave either, but she felt the decision had been made when Rae and Raymond had married. ‘Your place is with your husband,’ she told her sadly. ‘No matter where he is.’

  Reluctantly, Rae wrote to tell Raymond that she was ready to leave, and accepted passage with the Army.

  Rae’s mother and her siblings Vic, Mary and Ron came to see her off at Waterloo, from where she was to take the War Brides Express to Tidworth. The station platform was busy with war brides from all over Britain, and the Women’s Voluntary Service bustled about, ticking their names off lists before they were handed over to the care of the Red Cross.

  Suddenly, Rae’s brother Ron started running back down the platform to the exit. ‘Where are you going?’ she called.

  ‘I have to meet my mate,’ he shouted back, and to Rae’s dismay he was gone. Saying goodbye had proved too difficult for him.

  A whistle blew and everyone in the crowd started giving each other a last hug, before the women made for the doors. ‘Goodbye, love,’ said Rae’s mother, wiping away her tears with a hanky.

  Mary looked utterly desolate as she watched her sister disappear onto the train. This latest loss to the family proved so hard to bear that when Mary returned to her ATS base she spent three days in the camp hospital.

  When Rae’s contingent of war brides arrived at Tidworth, they handed over their luggage, ration books and identity cards, and endured the endless checking of paperwork and the humiliating medical examinations that were the price of passage to the States.

  They were told that their stay at the camp would be for only three days, but three days came and went and still they had not been taken to a ship. Every afternoon they were promised they would be boarding the following day, but the next morning they were always disappointed. Some of the brides became desperate, hearing stories of women who had waited at Tidworth for nearly two months. Unable to bear it any longer, several walked out, declaring, ‘If our husbands want us, they can come and get us.’

  Finally, after six days, Rae’s group of brides
were taken to Southampton to board the Bridgeport, an old steel-hulled German passenger vessel that the US Army had been using as a hospital ship. When Rae and the other brides went to investigate their quarters, they found that they were in the former psychiatric ward, and their dining area was enclosed within a wire cage – hardly the most welcoming of environments. Before the boat left, five or six brides had a change of heart and demanded to be let off.

  As the boat began to pull out of port, Rae and the remaining women rushed up on deck. A ship of wounded British soldiers was coming in, and seeing the war brides, they started yelling, ‘You’ll be sorry!’

  But the brides drowned them out by singing ‘There’ll Always Be an England’ at the tops of their voices, and Rae joined in with gusto, doing her best to blast away the aching sadness she felt as she watched her homeland slide out of view.

  Although the Bridgeport’s voyage began relatively smoothly, a few days into the journey it hit a storm. The boat lurched violently in the water and waves came crashing over the deck, causing the majority of the brides to suffer terrible sea sickness. One Jewish bride, who had been in a concentration camp, was suffering more than most and as the storm worsened she became increasingly distressed. She had previously spoken in fluent English, but now the language seemed to escape her and she began ranting at the Red Cross girls in German and wailing inconsolably. The girls did their best to calm her down, but it was clear that the fear caused by the storm had triggered memories of her previous trauma and she had to be taken to the sickbay, where she lay delirious for three days.

  Even those who had not suffered atrocities in the war could sometimes be driven crazy by the rough seas. During the first ever war-bride voyage on the Argentina, a terrible storm had made one bride so hysterical that she tried to throw herself overboard. Her life was saved by another bride, who managed to grab her before she succeeded, and she was taken to the sickbay and sedated.