A War Bride's Memoirs

A War Bride's Memoirs

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Memoirs of Audrey Brown covering her first 53 years.

London, England, 1920 - Rancho Bernardo, California, 1973

Audrey Brown

Edited by Roger Golden Brown

Published by Golden Galaxy Publications

Copyright 2015 Roger Golden Brown

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Also by Roger Brown:

The Truth Seeker’s Handbook

Insights

Heading Out

Encounters

33 Years of Dreams

Themes of my Life

Reminders From Life, for Life

Earth in Peril

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I can be contacted at the following e-mail address:

[email protected]

Also check out my world affairs oriented website:

https://goldengalaxies.net/Quasar/

And my more personal website:

https://goldengalaxies.net/

Preface

Born right after the end of World War I, Audrey recalls her childhood in London between the two World Wars, painting a picture of English life at that time. World War II comes, turning life upside down and she writes extensively about the difficulties and uncertainties. After dating an American serviceman, they marry and after the war, with 400 other war brides, she sails to America. First impressions of America, traveling by train to the West Coast, a reunion with her husband, and settling into family life in Washington State complete her memoirs.

A War Bride's Memoirs

Editor’s Note: The editing process consisted of me, Audrey’s son, converting the old typewriter manuscript (replete with weak and faded letters) into a computer text document and cleaning up some typos. The content was not changed in any way, except that beyond the occasional translation of a British English word that my mother added in parenthesis, I added a few more. My mom never made a table of contents but I put one together as a reference so the reader can better navigate the book. And I have included some photos at the end of the book.

Contents

A War Bride's Memoirs Title

Preface

Editor's Note

London, 1920

Mary Datchelor Girls’ School, 1931

Spectre of War, 1938

Bath, 1939

Jake Brown, 1943

Back to London, 1944

War Brides Travel To America, 1946

America

Newlyweds Reunite, Longview, Washington

Seattle

Lake Forest Park, 1956

Rancho Bernardo, California, 1973

Epilogue

About the Author

Photos

About the Editor and Publisher

Other Books by Roger Brown

London, 1920

Where do I begin? At the beginning I suppose. When I was born my mother haemorrhaged badly and the doctor, called in at the eleventh hour by the midwife attending her at home, decided that he could not save us both and my mother was given priority while I was put aside to expire peacefully and with as little trouble as possible. My mother lived to 94 and with an inherent cussedness I began to scream lustily and also emerged from the ordeal in good shape.

I was born in London to a middle class family. My father had been in Germany in the army of occupation until the end of 1919 and when he returned home and to civilian life he found that the land fit for heroes to live in had for a start no homes for them to live in. Not long after I was born we moved up a peg and from sharing a very small house we moved into the top half of a larger house with a small garden that my five year old brother could use - if the house owner was in a good frame of mind that day.

Dad worked In some mysterious place called THE OFFICE and as any matters pertaining to the adults were never discussed before the children it was years before I had even an inkling of what THE OFFICE might be and not until I was almost ready to embark on my own career did I discover exactly what Dad did for a living. He was employed by a very old established firm of importers and exporters and by the time I was in my teens he was export shipping manager and the financial hardships of those long years after the war trying to establish himself had eased.

Mum was a housewife, not in the slightly derogatory sense that the word is used today but in the full, wonderful meaning of the word. To my father she was lover, friend and helper in every way. To us children she was a loving teacher and confidant, a kindly disciplinarian and a tough fighter to help us achieve our aspirations. For all of us she was cook, laundress, housekeeper, organiser and economist. Not until after Dad retired did she ever know what salary he received but each pay day she thanked him for the housekeeping money he gave her, she made it go a long way and we never wanted for any essentials. And even in the toughest times there was always a little bit left over for a treat here and there that added joy to our life. She never had a cheque book until after Dad died, never had a credit card in her life but she knew how to get full value for every penny and in doing so kept us happy and healthy.

I have few actual memories of these early years but one of the recollections I do have is sitting in the window facing the street and counting cyclists coming back from a day trip into the country. Back then you did not have to go very far from suburban London to be in stretches of woodland and open country and every Sunday the streets were full of people going off on their bikes to picnic at some beauty spot. Few people had cars and a bike was the normal mode of transport. In the spring the cyclists would pick great bunches of bluebells that grew wild in the woods and would carry them home strapped on the luggage racks of their bikes. Mum and Dad had many a peaceful Sunday afternoon by the simple expedient of sitting me up by the window with a paper and pencil to count the cyclists, one count for a bike and two counts if it was carrying bluebells. I was paid the magnificent sum of a ha’penny (1/2d.) for every hundred I counted. No wonder I could count long before I went to school!

At one time either my brother or I told Mum and Dad that there was a hymn we sang in Sunday school that was all about the Sunday cycles. It took a lot of head scratching and confusion before the hymn was finally identified by Dad as being Stern Disciples! This reminded Mum of a similar occasion when Doug was much smaller and before I had arrived on the scene. Dad was overseas in France with the army during the war and Doug was given a new teddy bear. He told Mum he was going to name it Gladly. Mum thought it was rather an odd name but Doug said that it was because of the song in Sunday school and after all the teddy was just a little bit cross eyed. This statement was not very enlightening but when Dad came home on leave he settled the mystery by remembering a song he had sung in church as a boy, Gladly my cross I bear.

In later years telling this story Mum said that this particular leave of Dad’s was one to remember in many ways. There was a bad zeppelin raid the night before Dad was due home and Mum and her sister with whom she shared a house at that time with both the husbands gone decided to dash off down the street to their mother’s house for shelter and company. They got the children, including her sister’s new-born baby, up and dressed but by the time they got everything organised the raid was over. They decided that as long as they were all up they might as well go anyway as they were sure their mother would want to know that they were safe. I never heard what my grandmother thought of this 2am visit!

The house had an old coal burning stove that the two women were always complaining about saying that it couldn’t even get hot enough to cook a milk pudding (usually by this meaning a rice dessert). When Dad got home his army greatcoat was full of lice from the trenches in spite of the certificate that I still have that says he was free from vermin and fit to travel! The men left the trenches and went directly to the transport trains and boats bringing with them all their equipment and uniform items. As he and Mum were going out for the evening Dad decided to pop his greatcoat in the oven so that the heat, even though limited, would kill the lice and as the oven was no longer used for cooking food anyway. Naturally on that night the oven decided it had taken enough abuse and decided to heat up and when Mum and Dad got back the coat was a mass of charcoal - sixty years later Dad still laughed over their reaction when they saw what had happened. Mum was very upset and afraid that Dad would be court-martialled for destroying army property and his amusement at the whole affair didn’t help a bit. Finally Dad pointed out that as it was summer he did not need the coat while on leave, and when he got back he would be going straight to the trenches to relieve others going on leave and he would have no problem at all helping himself to another coat from the first body he saw. This reminder of the appalling slaughter did not exactly bring Mum peace of mind but at least she no longer worried about the coat.

Although, as I have said, the house we lived in when I was very small was owned by someone else and we only had the top floor we did for a while have a puppy and a kitten. Dad would take the puppy for walks on a lead and all he had to do was to rattle the lead and the pup went crazy with excitement running around in happy anticipation. The cat watched this performance a few times and decided that she would like to join in the fun so from time to time she would jump up on the banisters, reach for the lead that hung nearby on the wall and rattle it. The poor dog would come skidding across the linoleum floor, eyes bright and tail wagging only to find it was a false alarm while the cat sat there, looked at the dog and smirked. This game came to an abrupt end one day. When Mum cleaned the floors she would first clean the rugs and then hang them over the banisters out of the way until the floor was done. One day when the cat jumped up to tease the dog there was a carpet there and not being quite centred the moment the cat hit it, it flipped over and with the cat rolled inside it fell to the floor beneath. The cat was not at all hurt but it never again jumped up to tease the dog.

There is a sad ending to the story of this pup. My brother, Doug, took him out one day and he suddenly pulled the lead out of Doug’s hand, dashed into the traffic and was hit by a car and killed instantly. I have only a vague remembrance of being in the house when Doug came in crying followed by a neighbour to tell Mum what had happened. The neighbour took care of me while Mum went back with Doug but there was nothing that could be done. There were some men working on the road and one of them brought a sack and picked up the pup and told Doug they would bury him nicely in a hole they were digging by the roadside. After that we did not have a dog for several years.

It was on that same rather dangerous corner of the road that a couple of years later on my way home from school I was knocked over by a cyclist as I had dashed across the road without looking both ways as had been drummed into me as soon as I could walk. I was not hurt, just a bruise, and as it was obviously my fault I never breathed a word to anyone. In fact for a few days I lived in fear of the cyclist coming to the house and lodging a complaint against me.

The house we lived in and all the houses around us had been built many years previously on land that had originally belonged to the owners of what I suppose could have been called a small manor house. The manor had long since gone although there was still a large house standing in extensive grounds surrounded by a high brick wall. At the very end of our street where it joined the main road there still remained the cottage, the house that had formerly been the gate-man’s home at the entrance to the estate. My mother knew the older woman who lived in the cottage and once in a while she was asked in for a cup of tea on her way back from the shops. I was entranced with this old house. It was very small but had a winding staircase going up to an attic and the windows were all leaded with panes of glass in diamond shapes just like those shown in books of fairy stories. Mrs King, the owner - or more probably the tenant - of the house always gave me a biscuit and let me wander up to the attic and watch out of the windows.

She is the only neighbour I can truly remember, probably because of her being associated with this fairy house. In later years I got to know other neighbours by name from hearing my parents talk about them. One, apparently, was always trying to find out Mum’ s age by asking Doug oblique questions such as how old was Mum when the war started etc. Mum finally told Doug to tell Mrs Penny that she was as old as her tongue and a little bit older than her teeth. Not a bad answer but I doubt that Doug passed it on. I found out later that my parents referred to this neighbour, Mrs Penny, as Mrs Coin-of-the-realm in front of us children so that we would not know who they were talking about. Apparently she was not the most popular person with my parents.

When I was very small Mum had an accident in this house that could have had serious consequences. Mum used to put her washing out to dry on a line in the back garden. When she wanted to bring in the dry things she would take a large wicker basket with her and bring the filled basket up the stairs to our part of the house. At the top of the stairs was a gate to keep me in and to unfasten it to let herself in Mum would put the basket on the stairs behind her. One day just as Mum had done this Doug called from down below. Without thinking Mum turned around and moved towards him, fell over the basket and crashed down the whole flight of stairs.

Of course in those days no one ever went to a doctor unless they were dying so Mum put up with the pain and black eye for several days. Finally Dad said that perhaps she should pop in and see old Mr X who kept the chemist shop on the corner. The chemist gave her some aspirin and said she should consider going to the doctor if the pain persisted. When she eventually went she found that she had fractured her cheekbone but that it had begun to knit very nicely and there was no treatment necessary.