GI Brides: The Wartime Girls Who Crossed the Atlantic for Love (17 page)

Lyn got dressed in her wedding outfit and looked at herself in the mirror. The blue dress didn't look so bad, and the little flowers on her borrowed hat matched the small pink, white and blue bouquet she had managed to obtain. She loved being able to look over her shoulder at the real seams running down her legs. ‘You look beautiful, Gwen,' her mother said.

‘You look beautiful,
Lyn
,' she reminded her. How was her mother ever going to cope with remembering her new surname too?

At the church, Ben stood nervously waiting for her. ‘I'm still expecting that fireworks display,' she whispered to him, as she reached his side at the altar.

After the ceremony, she was surprised to see that all the neighbours were out in force and broke into spontaneous applause as the newlyweds arrived back at Padwell Road. Her mother's meagre wedding spread had multiplied into a hearty buffet thanks to those same neighbours, who had all pitched in. Instead of a tiny gathering in the Rowes' front room, the party spilled out onto the street as everyone celebrated the new Mr and Mrs Patrino. Miraculously, Lyn's spartan wedding had been transformed, loaves-and-fishes style, into a decent party.

The celebrations were well underway by the time the first fireworks began to explode overhead. Ben turned to his wife in surprise. ‘But how did you . . . ?'

‘I told you,' shrugged Lyn, ‘I asked the King and Queen.'

Lyn and Ben took the train down to London for their honeymoon. As they arrived at their hotel they heard a wireless playing in the bar. ‘Does that tune sound familiar to you?' she asked him.

It was the Chopin polonaise from
A Song to Remember
, the film they had been watching when the war ended – the same night Ben had proposed. Words had been added by the lyricist Buddy Kaye, and the result, ‘Till the End of Time', had become a hit for Perry Como.

Ben looked into Lyn's eyes. ‘From now on, this is our song,' he told her solemnly. ‘You and me together, till the end of time.'

When the happy couple returned to Southampton, the perfect bubble of their honeymoon burst abruptly. Ben was given notice to ship out in just forty-eight hours.

The number of GIs in the country had been dwindling ever since D-Day, and by the end of the war in Europe less than 250,000 remained. The operation to get the men home from the Continent was well underway, with 370 ships bringing an average of 3,000 men a day into New York. But Lyn had hoped that Ben would be around for a bit longer since he worked at the port in Southampton.

‘I bet you'll be right behind me,' Ben told her, as they said a tearful goodbye on her doorstep.

‘Well done, son,' her father said, clapping Ben on the back. ‘You've done a great job here.'

‘Thank you, sir,' said Ben, shaking his hand.

When Ben had gone, Lyn felt devastated. She went to see the only person she knew who would understand what she was going through – her GI bride friend Jean, whose own husband had also just shipped out.

‘You're staying with me,' Jean told Lyn, opening the door to see a tear-stained face that matched her own.

That night, the two young brides cried together well into the early hours.

Like many GI brides, Lyn was now playing a waiting game. With hundreds of thousands of GIs still being shipped back to America, their brides were not the US Army's priority. Before the war had ended they had already changed the rules on army transportation of dependants, which had previously offered help only to wives of officers and high-ranking NCOs. The new rules meant that the number of war brides eligible for army transportation was huge – a growing list of 60,000 British women were now awaiting army transport, some of whom hadn't seen their husbands since before D-Day.

Many of the brides waited patiently, while others openly expressed their frustration at being turned into ‘wallflower wives', as the American press had termed them. There were protests outside the US Embassy in Grosvenor Square, which was already receiving 500 visits from war brides daily, in addition to a further 1,000 letters of enquiry. In Bristol, a baby show was organised to help draw publicity to the cause, and when the recently widowed Eleanor Roosevelt visited London in November 1945, her hotel was besieged by an angry mob of brides and their babies, waving placards that read ‘We Demand Ships' and ‘We Want Our Dads'.

The tabloid press were not always sympathetic to the war brides' cause, but they did give it plenty of column inches. Meanwhile, in the House of Commons, the foreign secretary was asked how long the brides could expect to be kept waiting. He replied that it was a matter for the American authorities, not the British Government.

Eventually, the mounting pressure led to action in Washington. On 28 December, the American House of Congress passed Public Law 271: The War Brides Act, which offered non-quota immigration status to the wives of US servicemen, meaning that they could enter the country freely and without a visa. The cream of the trans-Atlantic fleet, the
Queen Mary
and the
Queen Elizabeth
, were among the ships that would be made available for war-bride transport.

A month after the passing of the War Brides Act, the SS
Argentina
set off from Southampton to New York. Operation War Bride had begun.

It was almost 900 miles from Arlington, Georgia, to Akron, Ohio, where Lawrence was to take up his new job as buyer at the Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company headquarters. Akron was known as ‘Rubber City', since it was dominated by four tyre companies: Goodyear, Firestone, Goodrich and General Tire, which all had headquarters there. While Arlington had been struggling, Akron was a city in its prime, with a fast-growing population and a bustling, modern downtown.

While Lawrence was busy sorting out their accommodation, Margaret wandered along Main Street with little Rosamund, watching the smartly dressed women in white gloves going shopping in the big department stores, O'Neil's and Polsky's. It was a shock to see paved streets full of cars again, and to be surrounded by neon shop signs and crowds of people. Margaret felt she'd returned to civilisation.

Lawrence soon returned in a company car that came with his new job. ‘I've found us a great little place,' he told her. ‘Hop in!' He was back to his old self and full of energy again, and she could see that encouraging him to make a fresh start had been the right decision.

After twenty-five minutes on the road, the view out of the window was becoming more and more rural, and after a while the houses had thinned out almost completely. Finally, on what was little more than a dirt track, they pulled up in front of a small summer house.

‘Here we are! Like it?' Lawrence said.

He jumped out of the car and started unloading their bags. Margaret followed him slowly to the front door, speechless. So much for getting back to civilisation – they were in the middle of nowhere, in a place that didn't even have a street address.

But she tried to hide her disappointment. After all, she had pushed him to move north and take the job. If this was what it took to keep him away from his former life of drinking, she would have to put up with it.

The next morning Margaret got up early and made Lawrence's breakfast. She kissed him goodbye at the door as he set off happily for his first day of work, and felt for the first time in their marriage like a normal wife.

She went back into the house determined to do her best to make it spick and span. It clearly hadn't been much lived in, since it was only used as a holiday cabin by its owner, and there were cobwebs everywhere.

After doing what she could to clean it up, she took Rosamund for a walk. There were woods all around the house, but she remembered having seen a small farm shop on the drive over, and headed in what she hoped was the right direction. She passed out of the woods and through meadowland, and as she did so she was struck by how lush and green the area was. It looked very like the English countryside, and she felt her spirits lift.

The farm shop proved to be much further than it had seemed in the car, and by the time she got back home again she was exhausted. She put the baby down for a nap and waited for Lawrence to come home.

That evening she cooked him dinner and they chatted about the new life they were going to make for themselves. ‘We won't be in this house long,' he promised her. ‘As soon as I've saved up a bit of money we can move into town.' Margaret felt encouraged that their life in the sticks would only be temporary.

The next day, when Lawrence went to work, however, leaving her alone with Rosamund, she couldn't help feeling slightly at a loose end. In a cupboard in the bedroom she was relieved to find a radio, and managed to get a crackly signal for a local station. It wasn't particularly interesting, but until Lawrence came back it was the only adult conversation she would hear.

With no telephone, no means of transport and no other houses anywhere nearby, her days became monotonous. As her pregnancy progressed, walking any distance became difficult and she and Rosamund were almost housebound.

She desperately missed the company of Lawrence's sister Ellen and the rest of the family in Arlington, and though they wrote each other long letters, she felt increasingly lonely. She didn't want to burden Lawrence with how she was feeling, so she put on a brave face when he came home, trying her best to be a supportive wife.

It was hard enough waiting until six or seven for him to return, but after a while he began coming back later and later. One night, she smelled beer on his breath and realised he had been drinking. She felt immediately panicked, but he reassured her that she had no reason to worry.

‘It's nothing, Margaret, just a few drinks after work,' he told her. ‘In my department it's almost mandatory. I know my limits, and I have no intention of letting things go the way they did in England.'

He kissed her and she clung to him, relieved. Here in the countryside she was acutely aware that he was all she and Rosamund had in the world. The only people she knew in America were hundreds of miles away, and she had no one else to turn to. The radio had become her constant companion now, but even so there were days when she felt almost mad with loneliness.

When her due date was approaching, Lawrence took Margaret to the home of a colleague and his wife, who lived near Akron City Hospital. She left Rosamund with them and went in to be induced.

Once the contractions started, she was left alone in a room on the second-floor maternity wing, with a little bell next to the bed to ring for assistance. The waves of pain became stronger much more quickly than they had in her first labour, and Margaret rang the bell.

A nurse in a white starched uniform and cap came in. ‘Yes?' she enquired.

‘My contractions are getting very strong,' Margaret told her. ‘Do you have anything for the pain?'

‘No. Just breathe through them,' the woman told her, and walked out.

Margaret struggled on for what seemed like at least an hour, but she was almost beside herself with agony. Despite the nurse's brusque response last time, she decided to risk ringing the bell again.

After a few minutes no one had arrived, so she rang it a third time, and then a fourth. She began to panic. Had they forgotten that she was there? Desperately, she began calling out, but still no one came.

Margaret had felt so lonely ever since she came to Akron, and now, in her hour of need, she was alone again. The realisation of her utter isolation made her cry bitterly, and all she could do was grip the bars of the bed as she tried to bear the pain for hour after hour without anyone to support or comfort her.

As it grew late, the lights suddenly went out and Margaret found herself in complete darkness. She heard shouts and footsteps running along the corridor outside, and rang her bell furiously.

The lights flickered back on and eventually a nurse came and told Margaret that there had been a power cut in the city, but there was nothing to worry about.

‘Please, don't leave me,' Margaret gasped, and seeing how far along she was, the nurse summoned a midwife. Baby Maeve was delivered not long afterwards and taken upstairs to the infants' ward.

The next morning, Margaret was woken by pains in her stomach and when she put her hand to it she felt extremely tender. She didn't remember feeling this way when Rosamund was born, but thought perhaps going through labour a second time had taken its toll on her body.

A nurse came in and told her that the doctor would be coming on his rounds shortly to give her a post-natal check-up. Margaret nodded. She was beginning to feel almost giddy with the pain and she was having hot and cold flushes.

Finally, the doctor arrived. ‘How are we doing today, Mrs Rambo?' he asked.

‘I'm having awful pains in my stomach,' she told him. ‘Is that normal?'

The man frowned, and started to examine her. As he did so, to Margaret's embarrassment, a huge gush of pus came out of her.