Captured Hearts

New Brunswick's War Brides

Melynda Jarratt

• Publisher: Goose Lane Editions
• Year: 2011
• Print ISBN: 9780864925190
• eBook ISBN: 9780864925572
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Social History
• Index: History

Imagine you're a young woman caught up in the ugly reality of war. You meet and fall in love with a young soldier from a foreign country. You marry and your world is upended: when the war ends, you leave all you've ever known behind — your family, friends, and way of life — to begin a new life in Canada. This is the story of hundreds of women who made their way to New Brunswick at the end of the Second World War. Between 1942 and 1948, young women from all over Europe came to this part of Canada with their servicemen husbands. Some married Aboriginal New Brunswickers; others married French-speaking Acadians; still others married New Brunswickers of British descent. In this compelling volume, wives, widows, fiancées, and those whose marriages failed and returned to Europe tell compelling stories of prejudice, perseverance, kindness, hope, defeat and triumph.

Chapter One

British War Brides

Over the course of the Second World War, more than a half-million Canadian servicemen, an estimated 45,000 of whom were from New Brunswick, were stationed in Great Britain. The “first flight” of the 1st Canadian Infantry Division, numbering more than 7,000 soldiers, landed at Greenock, Scotland, on December 17, 1939. Among them were nearly 1,000 New Brunswick servicemen from the Carleton and York Regiment, who had mobilized at Woodstock at the outbreak of war and were now part of the 1st Division’s 3rd Infantry Brigade. They and their comrades from across Canada were destined for the military camp at Aldershot, Hampshire, in southern England. By February 1940, 23,000 Canadians were in Britain. By July 1941, several more Canadian formations had arrived, bringing with them soldiers of the North Shore (New Brunswick) Regiment and the 8th Princess Louise’s (New Brunswick) Hussars from the southern part of the province. Other New Brunswick units, such as the New Brunswick Rangers, 90th Battery and 3rd Field Regiment, Royal Canadian Artillery (RCA), swelled the ranks of the Canadian army overseas. Many other New Brunswickers also arrived as members of the army’s myriad other formations and units, from signallers to service corps members and foresters.

Nearly 48,000 Canadian servicemen married overseas during the Second World War: ninety-four percent of their wives were from England, Scotland, Ireland, and Wales. That so many war brides were British should come as no surprise. Canadians were among the first overseas troops to come to the defence of Britain, they garrisoned the country’s coasts for many years — the North Shore Regiment spent nearly three full years there before landing on the beaches of France in June 1944 — and they lingered long after the war, closing down establishments and getting people and things home.

Whether they were from Grand Manan Island in the south or Miscou in the north, rural Sillikers or urban Moncton, the New Brunswickers who served in Britain were, for the most part, young and single. They were a long way from home, they had money in their pockets, and there seemed little point in long-term planning, so they wasted no time in meeting British women.

When small town boys from New Brunswick arrived in Britain, they found themselves thrust into a completely different world. The countryside, the customs of British society, and the confusing web of regional accents and dialects were all new, and the onus was on them to adapt. This was not always easy. Coming from a mainly rural background where the biggest city, Saint John, had a population of just 52,000, and even Moncton (at 22,000) and Fredericton (at 10,000) were little more than towns by European standards, young New Brunswickers straight off the farm had a lot of adjusting to do. As Canadians, they considered themselves cousins to the British and, in fact, many New Brunswick servicemen had uncles and aunts — or, at the very least, distant relatives — living in England, Scotland, Wales, and Ireland. That gave them an immediate connection with the land and its people.

But that was where the similarity ended. Most young men who enlisted in New Brunswick had never been as far as Montreal, or even Halifax, so it took some getting used to the comparatively sophisticated and liberal atmosphere of Britain. Most, however, quickly found a common cause with the British: the war. They shared the hardships of wartime shortages, endured some of the bombing, which began in earnest in September 1940, and witnessed the suffering of British civilians. That first winter of 1939-40, in particular, was one of the coldest on record and the Canadians were not happy with their barracks at Aldershot, a British military station that had been established during the Crimean War. The buildings were cold and draughty, and the British people seemed distant. Coal was in short supply, and soon wooden bus seats and park benches began disappearing: the finger of blame was pointed at the Canadians, who were suspected of stealing wood to heat their barracks.

It took a while, but over time, the Canadians’ attitude towards their accommodations and their British hosts changed as they got to see for themselves what ordinary people endured every day. When the German aerial assault on Britain began, in the summer of 1940, Canadians witnessed the many deaths and terrible devastation brought about by incessant bombing raids. Meeting locals and working with them in a common cause helped these young men, who were so far from home, to understand that the British were just like themselves — and the relationships soldiers formed with local women helped cement a bond that continues to this day.

The years of Canadian garrison duty in Britain were characterized by seemingly endless training schemes and long route marches that were intended to keep Canadian soldiers busy and get them into shape. But these were punctuated by frequent leave and a chance to get out of camp and see the Britain they had heard so much about. With a few days’ leave, they could travel north by train to Scotland to visit the beautiful historic cities of Edinburgh and Aberdeen, or they could reconnect with long-lost relatives in villages and towns throughout the “old country” to see for themselves the places that were part of their family history. Others went to museums and art galleries, while a few took advantage of educational opportunities offered through volunteer organizations like the YMCA and Canadian Legion as well as the chaplain services of the army. Most, at one time or another — and for some as often as they could — headed for the high life of London, muted by the blackout but not dimmed for the entertainment it offered. Only the most confirmed teetotalers missed the opportunity to frequent a British pub. Located on almost every corner and with quaint names like The Merry Tadpole, pubs proved to be an attraction young soldiers couldn’t resist. There were plenty of complaints and subsequent arrests by military police for drunken behaviour, which didn’t exactly endear the Canadians to the locals. But most men were decent and law-abiding and were welcomed by Britons, who knew that the Canadians had come a long way across the Atlantic to defend the motherland for the second time in less than twenty-five years.

The soldiers’ meandering around Britain was facilitated by plenty of cheap and clean accommodations for servicemen in overnight hostels operated by Volunteer Aid Detachments (VADs) like the YMCA, Red Cross, or Salvation Army. The Canadian High Commissioner, Vincent Massey, and his wife, the former Alice Parkin of Fredericton, were involved in the Beaver Clubs, which provided beds, meals, and reading rooms with up-to-date Canadian newspapers and magazines. Everywhere they went, soldiers mixed with the local population and, for the most part, made a good impression on the people they encountered along the way — especially the women.

The society that Canadians encountered was under enormous stress. The British introduced conscription early on, drawing men into the forces and essential war work and eventually conscripting women as well. Rationing, blackouts, and bombing were a way of life. More than sixty thousand British civilians were killed as a result of German air raids during the Second World War, and few were not touched by tragedy. Thousands of families living along German bombing routes or near industrial areas were torn from their homes during the Blitz, and the lucky ones survived to tell the tale. Others had the misfortune of being in the wrong place at the wrong time; their deaths were a constant reminder to everyone, including the Canadians stationed in Britain, of the deeply personal cost Britons were paying for this war with Germany.

English war bride Joyce (Ward) Buzzel of Saint John came from Eastbourne in Sussex. Joyce had a few close shaves in London during the Battle of Britain, in 1940, and was literally blown off her feet by a buzz bomb that hit Victoria Station in 1944. One of Joyce’s neighbours in Eastbourne was killed by an air raid. “Her body was blown out of the house and landed in our garden,” Joyce recalled. The force of the blast was so powerful that the woman’s clothes were torn from her corpse: “She didn’t have a stitch on. It was an awful sight.” But there was worse to come. Joyce’s father, William, was a Great War veteran and he volunteered as an Air Raid Warden, enforcing strict blackout regulations. When Joyce announced that she was going to marry Sergeant Ward Buzzel, a Canadian soldier serving in the 5th Field Regiment, RCA, her father was not pleased. He already had another suitor in mind for his daughter — the King’s caddy. “My father did not like it at all,” she remembered. “He said Canada was too cold and told me ‘Over my dead body will you marry a Canadian’.” Unfortunately, William Ward was killed in an air raid exactly one week before Joyce got married on July 26, 1942. “They found his body in the rubble,” she said sadly.

The same bombing and deprivation affected northern Britain. Scottish war bride May (Armstrong) Brockway was from Clydebank, a large burgh and important river port located nine kilometres northwest of Glasgow. Because of its strategic shipyards, and its munitions and aero-engine factories, Clydebank was subjected to intense German bombing raids on the nights of March 13 and 14, 1941. At the time, May was a twenty-one-year-old clerk working in a clothing store in Clydebank. Her story begins with a prophetic and disturbing dream that foresaw the experiences which lay ahead. In her dream, May was walking down a dusty, darkened road. On either side of the road were two burning tenement buildings, the flames licking up their high sides and casting an eerie glow onto her path. She continued walking through this unearthly landscape until she woke up, frightened. She remarked how close the dream was to reality: “There were two burning tenements on each side, and I’m walking down this road, and it was absolutely true of the night that I spent because I walked down the street with the buildings burned and bombed on each side. It was just as if my dream was a reality.”

Jean (Attwood) Belding of Fredericton was fourteen years old and living with her parents in Hounslow, Middlesex, when the war broke out. Her father had served in the Bicycle Corps at Gallipoli during the First War and was too old for the military in 1939, so he continued to work for British Transport in what was deemed an essential service. Jean recalls that her father refused to build an air raid shelter in their back yard. “He said he had survived one war and was ‘going to survive another’.” So it was the height of irony that he was killed by a stray British anti-aircraft shell while riding his bicycle home from work one night in October 1940.

When the Second World War broke out, in September 1939, it was a given that every able-bodied man would join the war effort. Women, on the other hand, were expected to fulfill their traditional role of tending to family and keeping the home fires burning. At the beginning, the emphasis was on voluntarism, and women filled all kinds of jobs that previously had been done by men, the notion being that every job taken by a woman released a man for combat duty. This much had been done in the Great War. In 1939, however, the British government also encouraged women to join the new women’s branches of the armed forces, and many thousands responded. Their importance increased by mid-1940, when it became clear that relying on women’s sense of patriotism was not enough to meet the demands of a country now under threat of invasion.

Under the Emergency Powers (Defence) Act of 1940, every British woman between the ages of eighteen and sixty-one had to register and choose from a variety of jobs. In December 1941, the National Service Act made British women between the ages of nineteen and thirty-one liable to compulsory military service, thus marking the first time in British history that women were called up for service in the armed forces. Over time, the different women’s branches of the armed services had varying age requirements, but, generally, women were accepted for military service if they fell between the ages of seventeen and forty-one.

In total, some 7.5 million women were mobilized for Britain’s war effort, including 475,000 who served in the Auxiliary Territorial Service (ATS) of the army, the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force (WAAF), and the Women’s Royal Naval Service (WRNS). Nursing sisters, in particular, served in combat zones, and were often under fire in Africa, the Mediterranean, and Northwest Europe. Another 375,000 volunteered for Civil Defence in Air Raid Precautions (ARP) and the Women’s Voluntary Services. Thirty-six thousand women drove ambulances and 73,000 were in the Auxiliary and National Fire Services. A further 80,000 women served in the Women’s Land Army (an agricultural labour force), and hundreds of thousands worked in the armaments industry.

Many British women found themselves in the front lines of this total war. Some Navy, Army and Air Force Institutes (NAAFI) “girls” were buried in French and Belgian military cemeteries following the disastrous evacuation of the British army at Dunkirk in 1940. Others were killed at their workbenches when British factories were bombed, or died in the streets doing their duty as Air Raid Wardens.

Before female conscription became the rule in December 1941, volunteers filled the ranks of the ATS, WRNS, and WAAF, and more than one seventeen-year-old was so enamoured with the thought of military service that she quit a full-time job to join up. Seventeen-and-a-half-year-old Doris (Field) Lloyd of Halifax, Yorkshire, was looking for some excitement when she joined the WAAF in January 1940. Bored with her job as a grocery clerk, she begged her mother to sign the permission documents for the air force. Mrs. Field grudgingly went along, figuring the WAAF would never accept her daughter. But the women’s services were desperate for recruits, and within weeks, Doris was at the Uxbridge training centre outside of London, learning how to march. Eight months later, on August 18, 1940, Doris was stationed at a Spitfire airbase in Kenley and found herself in the middle of one of the first bombing raids of the Battle of Britain. “I’ll never forget it for the rest of my life,” Doris said. “We ran to find cover. I remember looking into the sky and seeing so many bombers, the sky was black. They came in waves and the German fighters would come down low and machine-gun anyone who was running.”

Twenty-year-old Delice (deWolf) Wilby of London had a job at her sister’s dressmaking shop when the war broke out. She volunteered with the ATS, where she ended up working with top secret military documents in the heart of the city. Del met her husband, RCAF Gunner Thomas Wilby of Fredericton, at a dance, and he asked her to marry on the first date. Tom was of Lebanese descent and strikingly handsome. She thought he was crazy, but eleven days later they tied the knot.

The Wilbys were able to spend their leaves together, and in November 1942, Tom and Del planned a romantic getaway in York. Del was brimming with excitement at the news she was pregnant with their first child and planned to surprise Tom. But when she arrived at the train station that night, she was met by his commanding officer, who informed her that Tom had been forced to bail out of his aircraft over France and was missing in action. It took some time for the news to reach England that Tom was alive. As it turned out, he had broken his leg in the fall and had been rescued by French locals, who brought a doctor to tend his injuries. The doctor betrayed Tom to the Germans, and he was taken prisoner. When his leg was good enough to stand on, Tom was rescued by the French Resistance, who helped him make his way back to England over the Pyrenees.

By the time Tom arrived in England, Del had been discharged from the WAAF because of her pregnancy and had already left for the safety of New Brunswick. Ironically, her passage in a convoy zigzagging across the North Atlantic, during the worst phase of the German submarine assault on Allied shipping, was nearly as perilous as Tom’s remarkable escape. Meantime, Tom was considered a high priority for repatriation and was sent back to Canada. He arrived just in time for the birth of their first son, in June 1943, and they spent the rest of the war safe and sound in Fredericton.

Eileen (Meaden) Mesheau of Fulham, London, was seventeen and a half when she volunteered with the ATS in September 1940. After basic training in Salisbury, she worked as dental assistant in the Dental Corps at Weymouth, but then moved into a new position as a plotter, following the movement of airplanes in the skies over Britain. By early June 1944, Eileen was working the night shift at the Portland Dockyards in Dorset. She recalled going in at 8:00 p.m. on June 5 and seeing thousands of men and trucks spread across the docks, and hundreds of assault ships and landing craft as far as the eye could see. “That night we plotted those boys all the way to France, and when our shift was over the next morning we emerged from the plotting room, and there was nothing but complete silence.” No men, no trucks, no ships. They had all left for Normandy.

By December 1941, service was no longer optional and, under threat of severe repercussions, every young woman had to make a decision about what she was going to do for the war effort. (Exceptions were made for mothers with infants and children at home, and the elderly, ill, and infirm.) The push to enlist women into the armed forces was undermined by persistent and unfounded rumours that women in the services were “loose” — an accusation that led many worried parents to object to their daughters joining the armed forces. The belief was that young women would be exposed to inappropriate behaviour, mostly from their male counterparts; and there were fears, some of them grounded in truth, that innocent young women would get in “trouble” — a euphemism for unwed pregnancy.

Other parents wanted their daughters close by, so they encouraged them to sign up for munitions factories or work deemed “essential” before they could be conscripted. A father or mother’s stern refusal was often enough to make a young woman choose another occupation from the options placed before her — but no matter what she did for the war effort, it couldn’t completely rule out meeting men.

Eighteen-year-old Johan (Hillis) DeWitt of Glasgow, Scotland, was proof that Canadian soldiers could be encountered in the strangest places. She joined the Women’s Land Army after her father protested that no daughter of his was going to join the WRNS. Her father imagined that Johan would be so busy tending to crops and animals that she’d have no time to meet men. Besides, he had plans to buy a farm after the war ended, so he wanted Johan to have some agricultural experience. Johan ended up working at the Dunira Estate in Scotland, where, among her many duties, she mucked out the cow barns. Unfortunately for Johan’s father, the manor house on the estate had been turned into a hospital. One day, as she was in the barn pushing a wheelbarrow, Johan somehow tripped and ended up to her elbows in manure. As she looked up, she saw two Canadians standing there, laughing: she ended up marrying one of them, Private Luke DeWitt of Hartland, serving with the Carleton and York Regiment, who was convalescing at the Dunira Estate. Johan came to New Brunswick in 1946 and eventually settled in Burton.

Nurses were particularly vulnerable to falling in love with servicemen. Ann (Biles) Johnston of Glasgow was eighteen years old and just out of high school when the war began, and she joined the British Red Cross as a nurs...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Introduction They Found Love in War
• Chapter One British War Brides
• Chapter Two Marriage and Travel to Canada
• Chapter Three Settling In
• Chapter Four Continental War Brides
• Chapter Five The Darker Side
• Conclusion
• Acknowledgements
• Appendix
• Selected Bibliography
• Photo Credits
• Index
• The New Brunswick Military Heritage Project
• The New Brunswick Military Heritage Series
• About the Author
• Back Cover