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

by Barrett, Duncan; Calvi, Nuala

  Up until now, she had avoided telling her family back home about any of the discoveries she had made about Raymond. She knew that they would only confirm her brothers’ prejudices about untrustworthy Yanks and that her mum would be beside herself with worry. But she was beginning to feel at breaking point herself now, and if she didn’t let them know what she was going through she felt like she was going to burst. She sat down and began writing them a letter.

  She told them all about how Raymond had been messing around with his old girlfriend before she arrived, how he had a reputation as a womaniser and how he had fathered a child with a woman in West Virginia. As Rae wrote, her tears dripped down onto the page.

  When she had finished the letter, Rae put it in an envelope and went downstairs. There was no sign of Raymond or any of the guests. She knew she wouldn’t be able to post the letter until she had a chance to buy a stamp, and in the meantime she didn’t want Raymond to find it in their bedroom, so she reached up on tiptoes and placed it on the top of a tall cabinet by the kitchen door. Then she went out for a walk to clear her head.

  When she got back to the house a little later, Rae realised the flaw in her plan. The cabinet might be high for her, but at six foot two Raymond could see the top of it easily. She found him sat at the kitchen table with the letter in front of him, scowling as he poured over its contents. He looked up at her with fury in his eyes. ‘How could you write this about me?’ he demanded.

  She held his gaze. ‘Because I know it’s all true.’

  ‘The hell it is!’ Raymond shouted.

  Rae took a deep breath. ‘I don’t want to hear your lies, Raymond,’ she told him. ‘I’m going up to pack my bags. I’m leaving.’

  She climbed the stairs in a daze. Was she really doing this – really walking out on her husband? She went into the bedroom and sat down on the bed to compose herself.

  After a while, Rae began looking for the duffle bag she had arrived with, but couldn’t find it, so she headed back downstairs. Raymond was nowhere to be seen, but his mother was in the kitchen. ‘Have you seen my duffle bag?’ she asked.

  ‘Oh, that,’ Mrs Wessel replied. ‘I threw it out.’ Then she added, ‘I think there’s a note for you in the living room.’

  Rae went into the other room and found a folded piece of paper with her name scrawled on it. ‘I’m sorry, Rae,’ her husband had written. ‘Please don’t go. I promise things will be different from now on. I’ve gone fishing with my dad, but I hope you’re here when I get back.’

  Rae felt torn. She no longer knew what to think. A few minutes before, she had been ready to walk out the door – but now she felt she owed it to Raymond to hear him out. She waited in the living room until he got back, and his parents went for a stroll to give them some privacy.

  ‘Rae, you’ve got to forgive me,’ Raymond said, rushing over and taking her hands in his. To her surprise, he started crying, big tears rolling down his manly face. She had never seen a grown man cry before, and the sight shocked her.

  ‘It was so hard for me when I first came back after the war,’ he sobbed. ‘The things I saw out there . . . I can’t even tell you, but I saw some terrible things.’

  Rae thought back to the Raymond she had first got to know in Mansfield, the cheerful man whose friends had called him Hap. It was true – he didn’t seem like the same person now. She remembered the many months she had spent wracked with worry while he was away in France. Perhaps the horrors he had witnessed there were worse than she had ever imagined.

  The sight of her big, strong man broken like this was more than Rae could bear. ‘All right then,’ she said. ‘I forgive you, as long as things are different now.’

  ‘They are,’ Raymond replied, wiping the tears from his face. ‘I love you. I don’t want to lose you.’

  ‘I don’t either,’ Rae replied, and she meant it. She had crossed an ocean for this man, and she was determined to prove that it had been the right decision.

  23

  Margaret

  As Margaret sailed back across the Atlantic on the SS Argentina, she was filled with dread. She had escaped a drunk, violent husband in America, but with her father now away with the Army in Israel, the only place she had to go was her abusive mother’s house in Ireland. She hadn’t been there since the day she escaped with her father during the war, and her mother knew nothing of her real reasons for coming to ‘visit’, nor that she was pregnant again.

  Mrs Boyle was now living outside a little village called Tinahely in County Wicklow, and came with her donkey and trap to meet her daughter’s bus at Carnew. To Margaret’s surprise, she seemed quite pleased to see her, but it wasn’t long before the reason became clear. ‘Will your rich American husband be gracing us with his presence?’ she asked hopefully.

  ‘I don’t think so,’ Margaret replied.

  Mrs Boyle was renting a little house on a farm called Greenhall, and conditions were even more primitive than they had been before. There was no running water, so it had to be pumped into buckets, which were kept lined up on the table in the scullery.

  Margaret’s younger sisters Bridget and Susannah instantly fell in love with their little nieces Maeve and Rosamund, but Mrs Boyle wasn’t pleased to hear that another child was on the way. She had intended for Margaret to wait on her hand and foot during her stay, and was furious when she said she needed to rest.

  Margaret was not only exhausted, but was suffering from headaches and shortness of breath. She begged her mother to call a doctor, which she eventually did, and was told she had high blood pressure – hardly a surprise given all she had gone through in America. ‘Complete bed rest is what you need,’ the doctor declared.

  But before long, Margaret was feeling even more tense. Lawrence wrote begging for her forgiveness, and announcing that he was coming over to Ireland to win her back.

  Margaret was horrified, but her mother was delighted. On the day of his planned arrival, Mrs Boyle set out on the donkey and trap to meet Lawrence’s bus. As it pulled into Carnew, no one matching her son-in-law’s description alighted, so she marched onboard and shouted, ‘Is there a Lawrence Rambo here?’

  From the back of the bus she heard a groan, and spotted a dishevelled, dark-haired man who was clearly the worse for wear. She managed to get him into the trap and slowly they made their way back to Greenhall.

  Once there, Mrs Boyle stormed up the stairs to the bedridden Margaret. ‘Your husband is drunk!’ she told her.

  ‘I’ve never known him to drink,’ Margaret lied. ‘He must be ill.’

  The last thing she wanted was for Lawrence to incur her mother’s wrath and make the awkward situation even worse.

  The next day, when Lawrence had sobered up, he was at her bedside immediately.

  ‘Margaret, I was devastated when you left,’ he told her, sobbing. ‘You’re the only woman I’ve ever loved and I can’t live without you. Please come back to me, I’m begging you.’

  ‘How can I come back to you after what you did to me?’ she demanded.

  ‘I’d do anything in the world to take that back,’ he said. The tears streamed down his face and there was a look of fear in his eyes that she hadn’t seen before. Perhaps her leaving had made him realise for the first time what he stood to lose as a result of his behaviour, she thought.

  ‘Please don’t give up on me now, before our child is even born,’ he said. ‘I’ll do anything to make it right between us again – anything. You name it and I’ll do it.’

  ‘All I ever wanted’, Margaret said, sobbing herself now, ‘was for you to stop drinking and hold down a decent job, but you’re not capable of it, Lawrence. You’re just not capable of it. I tried for so long, but life with you was unbearable.’

  ‘I am capable of it – I’ll prove it to you,’ he insisted, desperately grasping at her words. ‘Give me a little bit of time and I’ll make everything right.’

  A few days later he left for England, full of promises to make a new life for them there. Margaret d
oubted very much that he was even capable of getting back to England without falling down drunk somewhere, let alone of finding a job. In the meantime, she struggled through her pregnancy in Ireland, trying to ignore her mother’s angry comments about her ‘wastrel’ husband.

  She gave birth to baby Veronica in a little hospital in Baltinglass, where things couldn’t have been more different from her traumatic experience in Akron. The hospital wasn’t busy and the midwife stayed with her throughout.

  But she felt desperate at the thought of returning to Greenhall. How could she cope with a newborn baby, in a house with no running water and a spiteful mother who refused to do anything to help? She remembered how her mother had beaten her as a child, and feared that her own children might suffer the same fate. But she had nowhere else to go.

  When she got back to the house, there was a letter waiting from Lawrence. ‘I’m working as a journalist for Reuters in London, and I’ve found us a place to live,’ he wrote. ‘Things are different now I’m in England. Please give me the chance to meet my new daughter and show you that we can be a family again.’

  Enclosed was a boat ticket back to England. At the sight of it, Margaret’s heart leaped. She longed to be back there again, and there was no way she would be able to afford to get there on her own.

  Living in Ireland with her mother was miserable, and she knew she couldn’t stay there indefinitely. Her departure from America really seemed to have shaken Lawrence up – maybe it had provided the impetus he needed to turn his life around. Either way, she had three children by him now, and she felt she had to give him another chance.

  Once again, she left Ireland and her angry mother behind.

  Lawrence was over the moon to see her and he was as charming and courteous as he had been when they first met. In America, he had been too drunk most of the time to pay much attention to his older two daughters, but Margaret was encouraged to see that he was taking more interest in the children, particularly the baby, Veronica.

  As he’d promised, he had found a job and a flat, although when Margaret arrived she quickly discovered that they weren’t quite what she had hoped for. The ‘flat’ was in an empty lawyers’ chambers in Temple, and there was no running water to cook with – only a tap in a bathroom across the corridor. Lawrence was working for Reuters, but he was on the night shift, which meant that he slept all day and they barely saw one another.

  As long as he was holding down a job and not drinking, however, she was not going to complain. She spent her days taking the children down to Temple Gardens or for walks along the river, and met up with her father’s friend, Daphne Steadham, whom she had first stayed with when she moved to London before. She also took a trip to Canterbury to see her grandmother, who was thrilled to meet her great-grandchildren.

  Margaret felt a little happier just being in London again, around familiar sights like St Paul’s and the River Thames. It seemed as if a lifetime had passed since she was last there, and she thought back to the young, carefree girl she had been when she first arrived in the city. She could have had no idea then that one of her many wartime dalliances would end up taking her on such a rollercoaster. She was only twenty-four, but already she had three children born in three different countries.

  Tentatively, Margaret began to hope that she and Lawrence might be able to make a go of it. She wrote to his sister Ellen in Georgia, telling her about their new life in London, and received friendly letters back, along with photographs of her niece and nephews in America. Her sister-in-law told her that no one in the family blamed her for having walked out on Lawrence, and that they all hoped it had given him the kick he needed to straighten himself out once and for all.

  Margaret truly believed it was what Lawrence wanted too, and when he looked into her eyes and told her he loved her, she knew he meant it.

  But one day, when she went to kiss him, she smelled alcohol on his breath.

  ‘Lawrence, have you been drinking?’ she asked him.

  ‘I just had a little nightcap to relax me before I went to bed,’ he told her. ‘It’s not easy keeping these crazy hours.’

  Margaret felt sick to her stomach. Soon she began finding empty bottles around the flat, and Lawrence was waking up in the evenings with shaking hands, clearly craving his first drink of the day.

  This time, at least, he didn’t try to deny it. ‘Margaret, I just don’t know what to do any more,’ he said hopelessly. ‘Every time I try to beat it, it creeps up on me again.’

  Margaret looked at his sad, tired face. In his mid-thirties, it was already haggard from years of heavy drinking, and now it was regaining the familiar puffy appearance it had when he drank. It was a pathetic sight to behold, and for the first time, she felt truly sorry for him.

  She knew the real Lawrence Rambo was not a bad man – he was charming, intelligent and full of life. But he was a man in the grip of a terrible addiction, one that would follow them wherever they went and whatever their circumstances. She knew that if she stayed with him it would ruin her life as well as his.

  ‘I’m sorry, Lawrence,’ she told him, ‘but this time it really is the end.’

  Lawrence made no attempt to argue with her. He knew as well as she did that their marriage was over.

  Margaret had no idea what kind of life she could give her three children as a single mother, but at least she was back in her own country now, with a few people around who cared about her. Somehow, she would have to find a way.

  24

  Gwendolyn

  For a few blissful moments when she first woke, Lyn thought she was back home in her childhood bed in Southampton. But as she blinked, her surroundings came into view: bare wooden walls, a pock-marked floor and a few cheap pieces of holiday furniture.

  It was little more than a shack, but ever since the day Ben’s mother had forced him to choose between her and Lyn, the cabin in the mountains above San Jose had been their home. It had no hot water and no phone, but until Ben found a job it was all they could afford on his small monthly allowance from the Army.

  ‘Hi, honey,’ Ben greeted her, as he emerged from the shower and began towelling himself down. Lyn got up, took their single pan to the sink and filled it with water for his coffee. She set it down on the little two-ring stove and then slumped at the table.

  ‘Don’t worry, Lyn,’ Ben said. ‘Maybe this’ll be the day.’

  As he dressed, Lyn poured the coffee into a pair of chipped mugs. Coffee-drinking was one American habit she had finally embraced, having given up on what passed for tea in the States.

  Ben poked his head optimistically into the food cupboard, but there was nothing that would do for breakfast, so he sipped his drink instead. They sat in silence for a few minutes before he stood up to leave. ‘See you tonight,’ he said. ‘Love you.’

  Lyn hugged him. ‘I love you too,’ she whispered.

  She watched from the window as he sped off through the forest towards San Jose in their rented jeep.

  Every day, while Ben was out job-hunting, Lyn tried to make herself a useful housewife – but more often than not she ended up feeling like a failure, and he would come home to find her in tears. Her attempts at cooking what little food they had – supplemented by handouts from his Uncle Tony – were mostly disastrous. She struggled to wash their clothes in the cold water, and hung them up on the line outside, trying not to drop them in the pine needles. If Mrs Patrino had seen how crumpled Ben’s underpants were now, she would have had a fit. Lyn was beginning to wonder if her mother-in-law had been right to say that she wasn’t the wife Ben deserved.

  Lyn still knew no one in America outside Ben’s family. She had tried to keep up a correspondence with her war-bride friend Jean from Southampton, who was living in Texas, but the letters had petered out. Lyn wrote asking whether she’d said anything to upset her, and eventually Jean wrote back to say that her baby had died and her husband had become an alcoholic. Lyn tried to persuade her to come and visit, but Jean said she couldn’t bear her
friend to see her the way she was now. Were any GI brides living happily ever after? Lyn wondered.

  Around 6 p.m., Lyn decided to get some food ready before Ben got home. She took a handful of beans from the cupboard, dropped them in the little pressure cooker and put it on the hob. Then she went outside to have a cigarette. Gazing out across the mountains she was struck by how beautiful it was here, among the pines and redwoods. When she had first arrived, she had been convinced that beauty and love would be enough to sustain her and Ben. Now she wasn’t so sure.

  In her reverie, Lyn had lost track of time. She jumped up and headed back into the cabin to check on the dinner. As she entered, she heard a strange popping noise, and saw to her horror that the top of the pressure cooker had burst off and the beans were shooting wildly out of the metal pan like popcorn. Only then did she realise she had forgotten to put any water in. Once again, she felt like an abject failure.

  The day might have ended in tears, had it not been for the unexpected arrival of Ben’s Auntie Louise. She found Lyn looking dejected, and put her arm around her. ‘I once put some apple sauce in the pressure cooker and went to take a bath,’ she told her. ‘I was still in there when it exploded – there was apple sauce dripping off the ceiling!’

  Lyn couldn’t help giggling. Seeing Auntie Louise always cheered her up and, even though she was Mrs Patrino’s sister, they got on well. Louise’s leg was deformed by childhood polio, and Lyn admired the way she never let it stop her doing anything, even going canoeing or horse riding. She seemed to have an unlimited reserve of positivity. I wish I could be more like her, Lyn thought.

  ‘Something arrived for you at my sister’s house,’ Louise said, handing Lyn an envelope stamped with the Red Cross logo. ‘Why don’t you read it while I sort out some food.’ Louise plonked her bag down and took out some chicken and potatoes.

  ‘Thank you,’ Lyn replied gratefully.