When America entered WW 2, many soldiers were sent
to England as a staging ground for attacks on the continent.
With many British men already fighting in Europe (or wounded or dead), the influx of
relatively well paid young GIs found a country full of young women willing to
date them. With the threat of battle immanent, both men and women grabbed at
happiness and married without knowing each other well at all. When the war
ended and the GIs were sent home, their young brides went with them- on
separate ships, of course, and with a lot of indignities. What they found when
the arrived on US shores wasn’t what they’d expected.
Calvi’s
grandmother was one of these GI brides, and she learned Margaret’s story not
long before her grandmother’s death. This led to looking into the lives of
other war brides. Four of them; Rae, Margaret, Sylvia and Gwendolyn (Lyn) have
their stories shared with us here.
One found
herself married to an alcoholic who spent every penny he made (and then some)
on alcohol, finally becoming abusive. Another married a compulsive gambler with
PTSD. One’s family didn’t take to her at first at all and seemed to
deliberately make her life miserable, and she contracted polio on top of that.
Another’s husband was womanizer. They all had culture shock and found that even
the English language wasn’t the same in the US as it was in England. The image of America that many had was of relative wealth,
and it wasn’t always so. Not all the GI brides had horrible marriages; even
after rocky starts, some remained happily married for a lifetime. But they all
had to be incredibly strong to survive what they did. Some of them were only
teenagers when they married and left their homes.
I loved this
book. Social history is fascinating to me, and I’m glad these stories are being
told before that generation dies off. Each chapter is about a different one of
the four, going in rounds. I confess that I sometimes had a little trouble with
that format; I’d forget what the one I was reading had done in her last couple
of chapters. I managed, though; it’s not hard to flip back and take a look.
The above is an affiliate link. If you click through and buy something, Amazon will give me a few cents. This book was given to me by the Amazon Vine program in return for a fair review. Neither of these things influenced my review.
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