A War Bride's Story
Risking it all for Love After World War II
AUTHOR: Cynthia J. Faryon
FORMAT: 5.5 x 8.5 pb / 128 pages
ISBN-10: 1-55153-959-4
ISBN-13: 9781551539591
ISBN-13: 978-1-55153-959-1
Gwendoline Cramer was one of the 48,000 war brides transported to Canada by
the Canadian government between 1942 and 1947. Many of them were escorted across
the water and handed over to their husbands with nothing more than a handshake
and a cookbook. Following her heart to rural Saskatchewan, Gwen felt like a
fish out of water. She couldn’t milk a cow or cook with a wood stove.
And then she had the in-laws to contend with…
Prologue
The ship’s whistle blows a long blast, followed by two short.
Even though it’s only four in the morning, and the sky
is black over the liquid lead swells of the Atlantic, I get
up. Conscious this will be one of the few days left when I’ll
be permitted to wear the uniform of Air Force blue, I reverently
button the large gold orbs, place my officer’s cap at
the rakish angle of a Canadian flyboy, and shrug into my greatcoat.
The coat hangs loosely over the uniform, helping to hide my
thin frame; bulk seems to be missing from my ribs, and I smile
when I think of what Ma will say when she sees me so skinny.
Gwen, my wife, is a great cook, but war rations made mealtime
a struggle. And while there was always plenty to eat at the
mess hall, 38 missions as a rear gunner robbed me of my healthy
appetite. I feel 75, not 25.
Silently, I join other dark figures along the ship’s rail. United
in war, we are now strangers in peace, and stand soberly hunched together,
gazing ahead into the darkness towards the direction of home. None
of us knows what to expect. Soon we’ll be with family again,
we’ll return to where we grew up, yet everything will feel different.
“Just like a picture I once saw in a magazine, of POWs standing wordlessly
along a stretch of barbed wire fence, shoulders touching, just staring.” The
sound of my own voice breaks the stillness, and although it is nothing more than
a whisper, it echoes loudly around us.
“Funny that,” the man next to me says quietly. “I was thinking
that very thing.”
I turn and smile at him, realizing this man, who has been closer to
me than my brother during our time in the service, was becoming a stranger
now that the war is over. If I can feel this way about him, how will
I feel about Ma and Pa, or worse, how will I react to Gwen when she arrives from England?
I think of my wife, pregnant with my child, patiently waiting to follow
me here, and I feel guilt. We were young, scared, and in love. Two
complete strangers thrown together by the world at war, with nothing
in common but the need to survive. Here I am going home and feeling
out of place, but how will she feel when it’s her turn to cross
the Atlantic? Will we still be in love? We had lived for living’s
sake, but neither of us had looked beyond surviving the war.
Suddenly, I catch my first glimpse of land and realize that this moment,
this instant, is what I had longed for every time I felt the Halifax
Bomber leave the earth. This dreamlike homecoming is what I had envisioned
with every round of ammunition I fired, every plane I saw explode,
and every load of bombs I dropped. I had thought of it a thousand times,
dreamed of it at night, and now I am full of emotion and I can’t
begin to find release. I am more terrified of this — my last
journey — than any mission I flew over Germany.
No one is there to meet me when the ship docks in Halifax. And no one
greets me at any of the train stations along the way home to Saskatchewan.
I stare out the windows of the passenger car and watch the monotonous
lines of fences, beginning nowhere and ending nowhere. Nothing has
changed. The telephone poles still stand garishly, the land is still
flat, and the sky is still huge.
When I reach Arborfield, the whole damn town is there to greet me and
the other hometown boys who had gone off to fight. Those of us stepping
onto the platform are welcomed with banners, hugs, tears, and music. With
tears in my eyes and a lump in my throat, I hug Ma so hard I almost
break a rib.
Again I realize that nothing has changed: Arborfield, the farm, the
people — everything is as I left it. The only thing that has
changed, it seems, is me. A lifetime ago, I left here a boy going off
to war to find glory and honour, and to earn the respect of my family
and friends. Now I return, a married man with a child on the way.
Soon my wife, my very English wife, who looks like a porcelain doll
and wears high-heeled shoes, will leave her home and join me here in
Arborfield. I wonder what she’ll think of my hometown, with its
board sidewalks, mud streets, and piles of horse manure steaming in
the snow. I smile as I try to picture her in overalls under the belly
of a cow, a bucket between her knees.
“My God, Gwen,” I say to no one in particular. “We survived
the war, but will you survive Canada?”
About the Author
A mother of three, Cynthia J. Faryon is an internationally
published author and freelance writer residing in Richer,
Manitoba. Canadian born, she focuses her writing on Canadian
content, covering topics such as travel, family issues, biography,
and history.
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