UK WAR BRIDE

    Reflecting on my life I realise I must tell of the events which led to my becoming a UK War Bride. I was a pupil at a London Girls School in 1939  when World War II was imminent. Plans were made by the government to evacuate schoolchildren and mothers with babies from the big cities because of anticipated bombardment  by the Germans. 
    My school was evacuated to Redhill, Surrey, 48km south of London, so we did not have to travel very far. After several unsatisfactory billets, I asked the mother of Sheila, one of the girls with whom I played games in the street with, If I could live with them, and she agreed. I was 14 years old at the time.
    The London Blitz began in September 1940, and my parents were killed in a direct hit on an air-raid shelter. I was an only child, so the Palmers, with whom I was living, became my family; Sheila and David my foster-sister and brother even now 60 years on.
    Their grandmother lived on the south coast of England at Bournemouth, and she invited Sheila and me for the school holidays during April 1943 and I was in my final term at school. She wanted to give us a treat one afternoon, and sent us to the Bournemouth Pavilion to a “tea dance” and to have afternoon tea. Bournemouth was a disembarkation depot for servicemen coming from the Commonwealth, and the tea-dance was popular entertainment. 
    A group of Aussie airmen came in - we had never seen Aussies in their dark blue uniforms, and the next thing we knew was that two of them came to our table and asked us to dance.
    I was whirled around by a tall and handsome young man whose name was Mark Edgerley. He was 19 years old, two months short of his 20th birthday, and I  was 17. His contingent had disembarked the day before after the long journey from Australia across the Pacific, by train across the USA, and then the Atlantic crossing. He asked if I would meet him the next afternoon for the tea dance. Gran said she’d like to meet this young man before she gave permission, so he came out on the bus to meet her, and she agreed  I could go with him as he met with her approval.

    Some weeks later he came to London on leave and I showed him the sights and he met my grandparents. He was sent to Lichfield for training and met two sisters at a dance — they wanted to visit London with some friends, so he asked me to meet them and show them around, which I did. They invited me for Christmas at their home, and he was on leave there, so we saw each other again. I embarked on a training course in Physiotherapy at Kings College Hospital, London; the school was then evacuated to Epsom.

    Mark joined 467 Squadron, one of the Australian Lancaster Squadrons, based at Waddington and was involved in the invasion of Europe offensive as a navigator in Lancasters. On their 28th trip, in1944, they were shot down over France and Mark was reported missing. I thought I would never see him again.

    Two months later I received a telegram from my aunt in London to say that Mark was there and to come quickly! I got the next train from Epsom and went to my grandparents’ flat and there he was, wearing an American Army battledress jacket and civilian pants! It was overwhelming to have him back safely and we all went to celebrate at the local pub. 

    When the plane was hit, the rear gunner and pilot were killed, Mark and 3 others were rescued and sheltered by the French Resistance — he and the engineer were taken to a farmers house and locked up in a back bedroom all day for 4 weeks so that the children did not know they were there. They were let out ay night for exercise and for a meal. 

    Then they were handed over to a British commando unit who were doing some sabotage in the area and then to an American Army unit from where they were repatriated back to the UK.
    We married after the war ended in October 1945, and Mark was sent back to Australia seven weeks later. I followed 7 months later, in May 1946, on one of the "bride ships", the Stirling Castle carrying some 450 women and some babies and children. Along with many others, I travelled in troopship conditions, down in the hold. Women with children had cabins. It was so hot going through the Suez Canal that we slept on deck. Sadly, a baby died and was buried at sea.
    I phoned Mark, who was in Adelaide, from Fremantle, and his first words were, “You sound like a bloody Pom!” I was rather taken aback, but he explained he’d become accustomed to his family’s accents and forgotten how English I was!
We disembarked at Melbourne, and I went by train to Adelaide. My first impression, as the train travelled through the Adelaide Hills, was of the corrugated iron roofs on the houses, which to us, made them look more like sheds! We had a second honeymoon in a slab cottage in the Adelaide Hills. It was without mod cons, with only a “bush” shower — bucket with a hole in the base which Mark filled with water from the wood stove. A bat flew into our bedroom the first night and I hid under the bedclothes while he 'shooed' it out! Quite a different experience for a young girl from London.
    Mark took a degree in forestry. Our first baby, a boy, was born a year after my arrival and a second son in Canberra, when Mark had completed his degree. Then we returned to South Australia for his first appointment a Penola Forest.

    There was a terrible forest fire there in 1950, with the loss of a fire crew. Before the fire had begun I had gone to the backyard "dunny" and found a tiger snake coiled up behind the door.
    My life in Australia has been so varied, as we moved around to other places — to other countries for Forestry Conferences; enriched with our 4 children and now 9 grandchildren. I believe God had a plan for my life and I quote from the writer Thornton Wilder “Who knows how one experience so horrible to us can set in motion a chain of events that will bless future generations?” Behind the seemingly chaotic and indiscriminate events, bigger story, a divine story, is being written. So I thank God for my life and its story. Mark died in 1988, and even though my life is busy, it is lonely without him.
Joyce Edgerley
Canberra, January 2000