War Brides

by Helen Bryan

  Other titles by Helen Bryan

  Martha Washington: First Lady of Liberty

  The moral right of the author has been asserted.

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  Text copyright © Helen Bryan 2007

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  Published by AmazonEncore

  P.O. Box 400818

  Las Vegas, NV 89140

  ISBN-13: 9781612183329

  ISBN-10: 1612183328

  This book is dedicated, as always,

  with love to Roger, Cassell, Michelle, and Niels,

  and now to darling Bo and Poppy too

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  Introduction

  Prologue

  1. Crowmarsh Priors, Boxing Day 1937

  2. New Orleans, March 1938

  3. Crowmarsh Priors, East Sussex, October 1938

  4. Austria, November 1938

  5. Crowmarsh Priors, March 1939

  6. London, August 1939

  7. East London, Late August 1939

  8. Crowmarsh Priors, November 1939

  9. Crowmarsh Priors, Late November 1939

  10. Crowmarsh Priors, August 1940

  11. Crowmarsh Priors, October 1940

  12. London, February 1941

  13. Crowmarsh Priors, March 1941

  14. Sussex Downs, August 1941

  15. Crowmarsh Priors, September 1941

  16. Crowmarsh Priors, November 1941

  17. Crowmarsh Priors, Frances’s Birthday

  18. Crowmarsh Priors, Frances’s Birthday: Into the Small Hours

  19. London, November 1941

  20. Crowmarsh Priors, December 1941

  21. Crowmarsh Priors and Sweden, January 1942

  22. A Training Camp, January 1942

  23. Auschwitz, March 1942

  24. Crowmarsh Priors, January–May 1942

  25. London and Crowmarsh Priors, May 1942

  26. Auschwitz, Late Spring 1942

  27. Bethnal Green, East London, June 1942

  28. Crowmarsh Priors, July 1942

  29. Crowmarsh Priors, August 1942

  30. Crowmarsh Priors, September 1942 and After

  31. Crowmarsh Priors, November–December 1942

  32. West London, August 1944

  33. Crowmarsh Priors, 8 May 1995

  34. Crowmarsh Priors, Midday, 8 May 1995

  35. Crowmarsh Priors, Evening, VE Day 1995

  Epilogue London, 12 May 1995, Missing Persons’ Helpline

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  INTRODUCTION

  WAR BRIDES probably began to take shape long before I was aware of it. I was one of the postwar baby-boom generation whose early years were touched, though in my case gently, by the war’s long shadow. My husband and I both had fathers who served in the US Army, as did all our uncles except for one in the navy and one who became an air force pilot. But women played an active role too. An aunt by marriage was an army nurse, and my own mother was an officer in WAVES, “Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service.” As a child, I was fascinated to learn that my respectable mother, housewife and pillar of her church, had once worn a pistol on her hip—one she had been trained to shoot if necessary—as she escorted telegrams and urgent communications across Norfolk Navy Yard. Because my husband’s father was posted to Europe shortly before my husband was born, my mother-in-law gave birth in a military base hospital in Alabama, far from anyone she knew, and then made a long, arduous journey home to her family in Wisconsin, struggling with a screaming baby on a series of trains packed with soldiers. Stories of how anxious families at home waited and coped with everyday life, living for letters and working extra hard, were part and parcel of our childhoods as much as the family photographs of relatives in uniform displayed in every sitting room.

  As a bride in 1944, my mother had walked down the aisle of her local Episcopal church wearing bedroom slippers beneath her satin bridal dress. Pretty louche behavior by the normal standards of her small Virginia hometown, but shoes were rationed and that was what brides did then. But everyone had enough to eat despite the rationing imposed by the US government, and the European war was far enough away to make a German invasion seem unlikely. It was only later, when I studied history, that I learned more about the war and its horrors, the grim and terrifying realities, hardships, and privations faced by people across Europe and Russia. When I moved to England to live, I began to grasp firsthand the impact of this terrible period, how dark and long a shadow it had left. I had lived in London for years by the time an American acquaintance visited shortly before the fiftieth anniversary of Victory in Europe Day, the same occasion the war brides commemorate in this book. Our acquaintance dutifully visited the Imperial War Museum, Churchill’s War Rooms, and Eisenhower’s underground headquarters. By the end of the day he was shaken by what he had seen and learned. He emerged into the light of day to say he wanted to shake the hand of every English person he saw over the age of sixty. After researching this book, I know what he meant.

  In households I knew as a child, family photographs of uniformed men and women were yellowing and gradually consigned to closets and drawers to make way for wedding pictures, new babies, and family holiday pictures. I began to add to what I already knew about how women had coped in the war, not sure at first what I would do with this information. The preoccupations women of any period share—falling in love, marriage, looking after husbands and families, struggling in many cases with financial pressures to make ends meet or forced by circumstances into spinsterhood—remained the same as the war engulfed everybody. In terrible times, and despite the heavy added burdens of war work, rationing, and the threat of invasion, many women fought a personal battle for some kind of normality, with the kind of determined courage never mentioned in the history books. Elsie, Frances, Alice, Tanni, and Evangeline soon invented themselves out of the information I was amassing. They hung about, waiting for their stories to be written.

  But if I could pinpoint a single starting place for the book, it lies in the character of Manfred, who was both real and dangerous, responsible for many deaths. All of the other characters in the book are entirely fictitious, and so far as I could discover, there is no ancient de Balfort family in Sussex. If there are living de Balforts anywhere, I apologize for connecting them, even fictitiously, with Manfred. Characters must be called something. But Manfred was a real individual, though it is unlikely his true identity will ever be known. I learned about him after moving to England after my marriage, from an older family friend who had served in British Intelligence during the war. John did not like talking about his wartime experiences. A deeply civilized, kind, and intelligent man, with a wonderful sense of humor and devoted to his family, he was never the sort to nurse a grudge. Even so, on many occasions he spoke bitterly about a German collaborator in the southeast of England who, Intelligence knew, was sending vital reports to Germans on the French coast to alert them to forecasts of clear weather over England. In the days before radar, notice of a clear night for flying enabled German bombers to navigate over Britain, to bomb it into submission. That the traitor, spy, or collaborator responsible for helping bring down so much death and destruction was never caught and brought to justice clearly rankled John enough to make me wonder about the war’s deep scars and unsettled scores, their long-term effects.

  Although the real Manfred is certainly dead, I have dealt with him in this
book in a way that seems fitting. I am sorry that John, may he rest in peace, will never read it. In lieu of real justice, I like to think he would have been satisfied that Manfred was exposed and punished at last, if only on the printed page.

  PROLOGUE

  Spring 1995

  In the departure lounge of the Atlanta airport on an early May evening, Alice Osbourne Lightfoot, the trip’s organizer, smiled at everybody and said, “Hey! How you doin’ this evenin’?” as she ticked their names on her list of their London-bound party. A line from the introduction to the Canterbury Tales, memorized in her school days, went round and round in her head, about how in spring “Thanne longen folk to go on pilgrimages.” Still do, even if the reasons we make pilgrimages are different now, Alice reflected.

  Alice was the last to board the plane. Carefully she stowed a heavy old-fashioned dressing case in the overhead locker and took her seat among a group of elderly ladies at the front of the economy cabin. The women were wives of the remaining members of Joe Lightfoot’s Eighth Air Force unit, college friends from the Georgia/Tennessee/Alabama area who had joined up together in 1941 and served in Europe. Those still able-bodied enough were making the trip back to England for the fiftieth anniversary of VE Day and a reunion with other air force units at their old airfield in Norfolk, from which they had flown B-17s and B-24s on dangerous daytime missions over Germany. Alice had volunteered to organize the trip, and because she was British born, and because she had a natural tendency to take charge, the other ladies looked up to her as their leader.

  After takeoff, the ladies slipped off their shoes and got comfortable and soon were doing what southerners call “visiting” over their dinner trays. Mostly they talked about their families, and liver-spotted hands passed pictures of grandchildren back and forth across the aisle. “Bet you’re lookin’ forward to goin’ home, darlin’,” they said to Alice, over and over. “Wonder if England’s changed much since you left.”

  “Home! Honey, Alice’s home is Atlanta! She’s lived in America for fifty years!” Alice’s friend Rose Ann protested from the next seat. “I declare, Alice!”

  “Shame you aren’t gonna be at the reunion and the wreath-layin’ and the dinner with us, ’specially after the hard work you did, organizin’ this trip for Joe and the boys, but since y’all are havin’ your own service, ’spect your old friends’ll be right glad to have you! ’Spect y’all got a lot of catchin’ up to do,” said a lady from the seat behind her.

  “Oh, yes, and I’ll be real glad to see them,” Alice responded in the North Georgia drawl that had crept into her voice over the years. “Oh, yes,” she repeated to herself. A lot of catching up indeed. Alice had never been one to shirk, and after what Elsie had written about Frances, it was her duty to go back.

  As the flight wore on, the women ignored the growing racket at the other end of the plane, where their husbands were drinking too much whiskey, telling war stories and dirty jokes, patting the flight attendants’ bottoms and calling them “sugar.” After dinner some of the ladies, including Alice, took out knitting or crewelwork. Others tried to sleep. At last Alice yawned, wound up her knitting, switched off the overhead light, and pulled on the eyeshade from the airline’s toiletries bag.

  As Alice’s plane boarded, another London-bound flight took off, from Ben Gurion airport. Because it was almost midnight the cabin crew served the meal quickly, then dimmed the lights. Soon Tanni Zayman’s teenage grandchildren were dozing in their seats on either side of her. Chaim and Shifra had left Tel Aviv wearing thin T-shirts emblazoned with the names of their favorite bands. Now the plane was chilly. Tanni asked the stewardess for blankets and draped one over Chaim, sprawled with his feet in the aisle and his kippah askew, and another over his sister. Tanni thought how sweet they looked asleep, but she was glad of a reprieve from their constant sibling bickering when her own thoughts were in turmoil. The thought of returning to Crowmarsh Priors left her too agitated to sleep.

  Down the dark aisle a baby wailed. Tanni shifted in her seat as the sound triggered the old nameless panic. There was no reason it should. She shut her eyes and took deep, calming breaths.

  She had opened Elsie’s letter sitting by Bruno’s hospital bed. As she unfolded it, the invitation and first class plane tickets to England for Tanni and Bruno fluttered to the floor. “No!” Tanni had exclaimed out loud when she saw what they were for. Even after all this time, the very thought of returning to England, let alone the village, even with her husband, Bruno, by her side, made her feel sick. And after his recent heart operation, travel was out of the question for Bruno.

  Her exclamation had woken him, so she blurted out what the letter said, then protested shakily that she wouldn’t think of going anywhere while he was in hospital. Propped up on pillows, Bruno was pale, on a drip, and should have been resting quietly. Instead he was surrounded by books, papers, and university business smuggled into the hospital past the nurses who had forbidden him to work. Now he gave her one of his penetrating looks over the top of his glasses.

  Tanni always found these looks of his—as if he knew something she did not—rather irritating, but the flash of irritation passed as Bruno patted her hand, then held it while he considered the best thing to do.

  The doctors had assured Bruno that many women suffered severe postpartum depression, though less had been known about it in the 1940s. Tanni’s amnesia about the period after the birth and death of their baby all those years ago in England was nature’s way of shielding her. Aside from one interlude, she had had a full and happy life as a wife and mother and now grandmother, and they had a lovely house full of light and books and modern Israeli artefacts near the university, with volunteer work at the hospital, friends, and her garden to keep her busy.

  He thought it was safe for her to accept Elsie’s invitation now and said, “I know it’s hard, but think of the obligation to our friends, however long it’s been. And with what Elsie says about Frances, you know you must go. But not alone—why not cash in my ticket, take the two youngest with you? You need a break from worrying about me, and in a few months Chaim will be in the army. Anyway, with so many brothers and sisters there’s never been money for him and Shifra to travel. Imagine how they’d love a trip to England. Go! Take the children, see your old friends. Spend a week in London afterward, take the children to the museums and the theater. Let them go to those street markets where the kids ‘hang out,’ as Shifra informs me is the correct term these days. You could even take them to Oxford, show them my old college. They can punt on the river like I used to. Shop a little, enjoy yourself.” Bruno’s eyes strayed back to his laptop screen. He was in the middle of writing an academic article. “Besides, in London you can go to Foyle’s for me. I have a long list of books I cannot get here, and—”

  “But, Bruno, I don’t want to go! I can’t think of leaving you! It’s out of the question!”

  “So there aren’t enough people to look after me? One goes out of the room, and two come in! Thank God the operation went well, no problems, and I’ll be home in a few weeks if the hospital doesn’t kill me first. Doctors, students, nurses—who knows who all these people are—they come in at all hours, one minute bringing terrible food I don’t want, the next, when I’m finally asleep, waking me to check my blood pressure. The physiotherapist turns up when I want to read, don’t ask…don’t look like that—I was joking. It’s all right, my dear. Go already! I’ll ring Elsie myself and tell her you will come.” He stroked her cheek, then pushed his glasses back into place and turned back to his article.

  So, reluctantly, Tanni agreed and invited her grandchildren so that she couldn’t back out at the last minute. She wouldn’t disappoint them for the world. But now that she was actually en route, awake and alone in the dark, her misgivings returned, heightened by the fretting of the unseen baby somewhere down the aisle.

  Just then, fifteen-year-old Shifra opened her brown eyes. She smiled at her grandmother and shifted to put her head on Tanni’s shoulder.
“I’m so excited about going to London, Bubbie. My best friend Rachel from school went and saw The Rocky Horror Picture Show. She says it’s brilliant. I told Grandfather about it, and his secretary got us tickets for a surprise from him. I saved up my pocket money so I can go shopping in Camden Lock—Rachel told me where the best stalls are. And I’ll get to see where Eema was born! And…” Her eyes closed midsentence, even though the baby was now howling lustily down the aisle.

  Shifra’s soft, curly hair tickled Tanni’s cheek. She was the youngest of her large family, and Tanni still thought of her as “the baby” although in the last year Shifra had grown tall and was losing her childhood chubbiness. Tanni had been little older than Shifra when she had stepped off the train and seen Crowmarsh Priors for the first time, not looking forward to a holiday, but married and a mother. Had she ever been as young and carefree as Shifra, with her rock music and T-shirts and wrists loaded with colorful braided friendship bracelets teenagers gave each other? Bruno was right. She had to make this trip for Frances, who had been her friend. What would she have done without her friends all those years ago?

  People around her were yawning now and sitting upright, stretching cramped limbs. The flight attendants were coming down the aisles serving tea and fruit. Shortly afterward the captain announced their descent into Gatwick, and her grandchildren craned their necks for their first sight of England as the plane circled over the early morning traffic on the M23.

  The plane’s shadow swooped over a big silver Mercedes with a plump, bejeweled little woman at the wheel. The Mercedes was travelling down the motorway toward Sussex at reckless speed, darting between lanes of lorries. Lady Carpenter, the third member of the group, pressed a purple kid pump hard on the accelerator. To the dismay of her family she insisted on driving herself, though at seventy-one her concentration at the wheel wasn’t what it had been. But since her husband’s death she controlled the family fortune and would do as she pleased…