GI Brides: The Wartime Girls Who Crossed the Atlantic for Love (41 page)

It seemed that all he wanted to talk about was Lyn's relationship with her parents. She searched her heart, but she could find nothing to complain about regarding Mr and Mrs Rowe, who had always been loving and supportive.

Meanwhile, if she ever tried to ask the therapist a question, the answer would invariably be: ‘What do
you
think?'

After each session, Lyn came away feeling worse, yet the next week she would feel the need to return even more strongly. Meanwhile, her life was still as narrow and closed as it had been before.

One day, Lyn was sitting in the psychotherapist's room when a thought came to her. ‘I can't leave the house because I'm too afraid, and yet every Friday I drive out and spend an hour with you,' she told him. ‘Don't you think there's something strange about that?'

‘That's for
you
to figure out,' he responded.

Lyn felt rage bubbling up within her. ‘Why do you do that?' she demanded.

‘Do what?' he asked calmly.

‘
That
,' said Lyn. ‘You just sit there, while I get nowhere. I've been coming to you for ages, and I'm getting worse and worse, but you don't say or do anything! I'm so angry with you!'

Had it been his intention to provoke her? she wondered. Perhaps in the end it didn't really matter. Something inside her had snapped, and as she drove home that day, she knew she would never go back. There was only one person who could help Lyn Patrino – and that was herself.

The following Friday, when Lyn didn't go to therapy, she felt a sense of freedom. She realised she had become dependent on the sessions and had convinced herself she couldn't stop going. Now that she had proved herself wrong, she began to look at what other assumptions she had made about her life.

Gradually, she started doing things that she had given up. Mrs Patrino tactfully retreated as Lyn took over responsibilities for her own household again. Ben was as protective as ever, but now Lyn could see that in his desire to shield her he had aided her withdrawal from the world. She had to stop hiding behind him.

The first time Lyn ventured out on her own again, she closed her eyes and thought back to her younger self, getting on the
President Tyler
. She drew on the spirit of that carefree young girl, even though she now regarded her as naive, and even a little childish. The older Lyn was learning to get in touch with that sense of independence again.

After a few months, Lyn was feeling stronger, but there was one last challenge she felt she had to face. ‘I want to go back out to work,' she told Ben.

‘Well,' he said, ‘it's all right with me – provided that, if I get worried about you, I can tell you to quit.' His protective instinct was still strong, and he didn't want to see his wife taking on too much.

Lyn was determined, however. When a friend told her about a temporary secretarial job coming up at the San Jose Police Department, she jumped at the chance.

Being busy again took Lyn out of herself, and her old love of being around people returned. She became a popular presence at the department, and once the temporary contract was up they asked her to become permanent.

One night after work, Lyn and Ben drove up to Monterey for a picnic. After a short walk along the pier they sat and watched the sea lions playing in the water, honking at each other and rolling on their fat bellies.

Lyn had brought fresh bread from the bakery, and they ate it with Italian cheese, salami and crunchy pickles. Then they shared a thermos of hot coffee and some homemade cookies.

As they walked on the rocks afterwards, feeling the mist against their faces, they watched the seagulls flying overhead and the waves crashing against the shore. ‘This is the life,' said Lyn, smiling.

Her time in America hadn't been easy, but with her husband at her side she felt truly happy.

Epilogue

Lyn and Ben remained happily married for many decades, and in 1985 they celebrated their fortieth wedding anniversary. Despite all that had happened to her in America, Lyn felt lucky. Unlike other GI brides she knew, her marriage had worked out for the best.

In fact, despite gloomy predictions during the war years, the divorce rate among GI brides and their husbands was lower than the national average, and over the years many visited England to renew their vows in the churches where they had married decades earlier.

When the Vietnam War came, Lyn's son John was drafted into the Army, and put on a GI uniform just as his father had done. Lyn's heart ached at the thought of her boy fighting in a war thousands of miles away, and she wrote to her parents back in Southampton saying that now she understood what she had put them through by moving halfway across the world.

Lyn finally felt part of her family in America. Despite a difficult start, she had grown to love her Italian in-laws, and over the decades Mrs Patrino became like a second mother to her. Minutes before she died, she drew Lyn close and whispered, ‘I'm so sorry about how things started out between us.'

‘There's nothing to apologise for,' Lyn replied. ‘I know I wasn't an angel myself.'

Mrs Patrino left Lyn her treasured glass candlesticks, which Lyn made sure to take good care of. But she took something else from her mother-in-law as well – a lesson that has stayed with her ever since. When her granddaughter Jenny got married a few years ago, Lyn had one piece of advice for her: ‘Just remember, you don't marry a man, you marry a whole family, and you've got to bend over backwards to make it work.'

In 1989, Ben died of a brain tumour, following a long and difficult illness. Although it was a distressing time for Lyn, she took great comfort from the care that she was able to give her husband. Nursing him through his final weeks, Lyn felt she was finally paying him back for all he had done for her throughout their marriage. Ben had stood by her through thick and thin, supporting her with gentle love and kindness however bad things got. Now, at last, she felt able to look after him in return.

A few years after Ben's death, Lyn was on a bus one day when she heard a woman of about her own age speaking with an English accent in the row behind her. ‘Are you a GI bride by any chance?' Lyn asked her.

Lyn's hunch turned out to be correct. The other woman was a war bride by the name of Jean Borst who came originally from Welwyn Garden City. Jean was a member of an organisation called the World War II War Brides Association, which she told Lyn met up for a grand reunion one weekend a year, each time in a different American city. Jean also ran a local chapter in San Jose. ‘Maybe you'd like to join us?' she suggested.

Lyn leaped at the chance to meet some fellow GI brides. At her first big gathering in San Diego, she was surprised to discover that the group encompassed not just British women, but Italians and Germans as well. At first, she felt an instinctive hostility towards them, but she soon found herself thawing out, sharing a bottle of wine at the bar with a German bride who had also been widowed. ‘Isn't it funny,' Lyn said, ‘that I can be friends with you, after what your people did to my city?' The German woman turned to her and said, ‘You don't know what your people did to mine!' After that, they decided to keep off the topic of the war, but they have remained the best of friends ever since.

Every month, Lyn continues to attend Jean Borst's regular lunches at the Hickory Pit diner in San Jose, where a large group of local brides gathers to reminisce and share their memories of the war years. And these days she doesn't go there on her own. Seven years ago, Lyn met a former GI called Richard, who was getting over the sudden loss of his wife. The chemistry between them was instant.

Richard and Lyn live in separate houses, a few blocks away from each other, but they meet up every day, and enjoy holidaying together in Reno and Las Vegas. But despite their close relationship, Lyn will always keep a special place in her heart for her beloved Ben. On his gravestone, in a beautiful plot in California, her own name is carved alongside his, along with the title of ‘their' song: ‘Till the End of Time'.

* * *

Sylvia and Bob remained married and living in the same house, but they continued to have largely separate lives. He retired early from the post office, convinced that he could make his fortune on the horses – but as ever, his ‘system' came to nothing.

In his final years, Bob had a leg amputated as a result of diabetes and was confined to a wheelchair. Although he and Sylvia spent little time together, they continued to attend family events as a couple. A few weeks before he died in 2001, they were at Bob's nephew's wedding together when, halfway through the ceremony, he asked Sylvia if she could pass him a pencil.

‘What for?' she asked.

‘I want to write down the hymn numbers.'

‘Why, Bob?' Sylvia asked. It wasn't like him to take such an interest in religion.

‘I'm going to play them on the lottery,' he replied. ‘I think maybe they've been chosen for a reason.'

Sylvia sighed and handed over a pencil from her handbag. Even at the end of his life, when all his hopes had come to nothing, still Bob could think of nothing but gambling.

Although Bob had not turned out to be the husband Sylvia had hoped for, he had given her four wonderful children, and she also had the love and support of her English friends at the Bluebell Branch. She continued to work hard and save, and as a result she was able to go home and visit her family in Woolwich every few years.

Sylvia's last trip home was in 2007, and she doesn't think she will make the trip again. Not long after she returned to Baltimore she was diagnosed with cancer, and although she made a good recovery, the experience has made her fearful of travelling too far away from home. But she still enjoys all things English and made sure to watch Prince William and Kate Middleton's wedding in 2011 and the Queen's Diamond Jubilee in 2012, dressing in red, white and blue for the occasion.

Although Sylvia may never take another trip back to Woolwich, she knows she will be going home eventually. When she dies, she wants her ashes to be taken back to London to join those of her parents.

If Sylvia had her time again, she would live her life differently and never agree to become a GI bride. But she consoles herself with the thought that many women had worse experiences than her own. Her marriage may have become one of compromise, but her good humour saw her through the difficult times and she never lost her love of singing. Now, at the age of eighty-five, she is a member of the choir at the local seniors' centre, which tours around nearby nursing homes, cheering up the residents with old wartime songs.

* * *

When Rae married Joe Zurovcik, she did her best to forget her first husband. But one day, as she walked out of the Five & Dime in McKeesport, she ran into her former sister-in-law, Chi-Chi, who was out shopping with her little daughter.

Chi-Chi greeted Rae warmly before turning to the child. ‘You don't know this lady,' she told her, ‘but she was married to Uncle Ray before he died.'

‘Raymond died?' Rae asked her in shock.

‘Oh, yeah,' Chi-Chi said. ‘He got black lung disease from working in the coal mine. By the time he passed, he only weighed ninety-eight pounds.'

Rae thought back to the big, strong man she had known. ‘What a horrible way to go,' she replied, shaking her head sadly. She had always warned him not to go down the coal mine, and it seemed that she had been right. Despite the misery that Raymond had caused her, Rae felt pity for him now.

Once she was happily remarried, Rae began craving a baby again, but despite their best efforts, after several years she and Joe had not managed to conceive. Rae thought back to the unborn child she and Raymond had lost all those years ago. Had that been her only chance to be a mum?

Neither her doctor nor her priest could suggest anything that might help, and she had all but given up hope. Then finally, at the age of thirty-eight, she discovered she was pregnant. Rae gave birth to little Lynda, and another baby, Sue, followed two years later. Her third child died soon after birth of German measles, but despite the distressing experience, Rae was determined to try again. At forty-two, she gave birth to a baby boy, Michael. ‘Okay, now I quit,' she told Joe.

Although Rae has spent more than half her life as an American citizen, she has never lost sight of her English heritage and in her garden she flies both the Stars and Stripes and the Union Jack. She spends much of her time visiting local schools to tell children about her memories of the war, and even puts on her old ATS uniform. In July 2005, she was honoured to be asked to come to London for the Queen's unveiling of the National Monument to the Women of World War II in Whitehall, an event attended by Dame Vera Lynn.

On 7 July, two days before the ceremony, she was standing near Edgware Road Underground Station when a bomb was detonated on a train there, one of four in the city that between them claimed 52 lives. But despite the post-traumatic stress she has lived with all her life as a result of the war, Rae felt more angry than afraid. She couldn't believe that young men who had grown up in Britain could commit such acts of violence against their own country.

Like many of her compatriots in America, Rae enjoys reminiscing about the war with fellow GI brides whenever possible. She is a member of the War Brides Association, through which she and Lyn became friends several years ago. At one point she was the WBA's secretary, although now she limits herself to organising the annual sing-along. Despite having now been diagnosed with emphysema, every year without fail Rae can be found in a hotel conference room somewhere in America, belting out a two-hour set of old wartime tunes including ‘Roll Me Over', ‘It's Been a Long, Long Time' and ‘Bless 'Em All'.

* * *

Margaret and Patrick made the most of their glamorous life in Geneva, where he worked his way up to Assistant Director-General, Treasurer and Financial Comptroller of the ILO, the highest non-elected position in the organisation. He was even honoured by the Queen with a CMG. Margaret felt great pride in her husband's achievements, and threw herself into the role of the perfect wife and hostess, organising sumptuous dinner parties and mixing with the great and the good.