RootsChat.Com
General => The Common Room => The Lighter Side => Topic started by: clairec666 on Monday 31 December 18 12:50 GMT (UK)
-
Discussion started in https://www.rootschat.com/forum/index.php?topic=805383.0 (https://www.rootschat.com/forum/index.php?topic=805383.0).
Several of our parents/grandparents met because of WW2. So if someone had bumped off Hitler before he came to power, we might never have been born!
Both my sets of grandparents met because my grandfathers were in the RAF. Paternal grandfather was stationed near my grandmother's family, and married her in 1944. Maternal grandfather served alongside my grandmother's brother, he was introduced to her family in 1945 and eventually married her in 1954. I am certain that neither couple would have met in different circumstances. They all came from different areas of the country.
I am still investigating whether WW1 affected my family, but it certainly didn't have as great an impact (two sets of great-grandparents married before the war started).
So cast your vote in the poll, and share your own stories below. :)
-
Not my parents/grandparents but my great uncle joined the Seaforth Highlanders and at some point he was invited to a friends house who was serving alongside there he met friends sister and after the war he returned and married her my grt uncle was born in Angus Scotland his wife in Bradford Yorkshire England
-
My grandparents met because of the Kaiser when my grandfather, as an experienced NCO, was sent to train a new batallion in Newcastle rather than go to France with the BEF. My parent's on the other hand didn't meet until after they were both demobbed.
-
Mam was a Land Army girl working on the farm next to the one owned by my Dad's family. They met in the hayfield.....
ADDED: Today would have been their 73rd wedding anniversary.
-
My parents met in 1943. Dad was just back from serving in West Africa for two years. He was a Dental Technician attached to the Royal Army Medical Corps and was non combatant and wore a red cross on his sleeve. This always annoyed him as he wanted to fight like his older brother who was in bomb disposal. On returning to UK he was posted to a dental unit in Edinburgh.
Mum had joined the ATS but due to ill health was discharged and returned to her home city of Edinburgh where she worked on waste paper collections with a horse and cart.
They met when she was doing her rounds and married on Christmas Eve 1945.
Dorrie
-
Both my grandparents met due to ww2 and my great grandarents due to Ww1. My grandfather John Barr from Saltcoars met my grandmother when he was stationed in Northumberland she was doris Watson from Throckley. John's parents had met in Ww1 when his father had been stationed in Kent and married florence valet in Eltham.
My other grandparents met when my grandfather was stationed at Prestwick airport as an engineer in Ww2 and he was from edinburgh
-
My grandfather died in WW1. When his widow died a few years later my mother was sent to Canada to live with relatives. My parents never would have met in 1940 without my grandfather’s death in 1918.
sami
-
My Parents met via WW2
Dad had been engaged but decided he wouldn't marry until the war had finished, just in case anything happened he didn't want to leave a widow and perhaps young family behind. Alas his intended decided she could wait, and sent him a Dear John letter, and married a chap who reportedly was a bank clerk!
His intended worked for the Telephone exchange in a nearby town with my mum, she asked mum to be his Pen Friend, to cheer him up. So they started to write to each other. As the war closed my dad's duties were to escort various German officers back to the Officer POW camp nearby, On one trip he arranged to meet my mum at the Train Station, they met and the rest is history.
If it hadn't been for the war it is unlikely that my parents would have met at all
-
My Parents met via WW2
Dad had been engaged but decided he wouldn't marry until the war had finished, just in case anything happened he didn't want to leave a widow and perhaps young family behind. Alas his intended decided she could wait, and sent him a Dear John letter, and married a chap who reportedly was a bank clerk!
His intended worked for the Telephone exchange in a nearby town with my mum, she asked mum to be his Pen Friend, to cheer him up. So they started to write to each other. As the war closed my dad's duties were to escort various German officers back to the Officer POW camp nearby, On one trip he arranged to meet my mum at the Train Station, they met and the rest is history.
If it hadn't been for the war it is unlikely that my parents would have met at all
Good story. There must be a lot of broken engagements because of the war, and many will have been unrecorded and never talked about again.
My grandmother's brother, for example, married a woman who had been engaged to another man (I think he died in action but nobody in the family is sure). So he didn't actually meet her because of the war (they had been neighbours since childhood), but there's a chance she would have married someone else instead.
-
During WWII, the United States recruited English women to serve as secretaries in the American Army. That's how my mother and father met. They worked in the same office - some sort of gas mask supply unit. She was a secretary; he lucked out and was not sent to the front lines because he had been drafted out of college where he was chemistry major. Later, they were both sent to France and then on to Germany. They got married in Paris.
-
My parents met in the Air Force - he failed her on her first RAF driving test! My uncle was posted to Yorkshire towards the end of the war, and married a woman from there.
I don't think there was anything similar in WW1, grandad and his sister were already married by then.
I would love to know how my grandfather's cousin, a middle-aged naval petty officer, came to marry a woman from Camberwell in 1910!
-
My parents didn't meet until 1962 but I do wonder if my Dad (who was older would have married someone else had it not been for the war.
I know that one set of my daughter's great grandparents met because of the war. She was from Berkshire and he was a Scottish boy who had been called up into the RAF and was based close to her home at the end of the war.
I wonder about WW1 and my my maternal grandparents. They did not marry until their 30s and wonder if there had been someone else but the war had got in the way.
-
My father was born in Brazil to English parents (grandfather employed in the English gold mining company in Morro Velho, Minas Gerais, Brazil), educated in England, passed his flying test in Hamble in 1937. In 1940 he was called up, as a pilot. He returned to England, however, it was found during his medical that his eye sight was failing. He was then assigned to Air Sea Rescue duties at various places. In 1943 he met my mother, a Dorset WAAF in Torquay. They married later that year, and in 1946 they moved to Brazil. Of their 8 children, I'm the only one who returned to live in England...
-
My father in law went to England as NZ volunteer naval reserve. For airforce training. Failed exam, so stayed Navy.
Introduced to family of mother in law in Liverpool by someone. Younger sister opened door, announced to all he looked like Alec Guinness. Mother in law added him to her list of pen pals (she was found out as she put letters in the wrong envelopes!).
They married Oct 1944. After VE he was back in NZ on leave prior to posting into the pacific. He was still in Auckland at end of war.
NZ govt arranged transport for all the war brides. She decided she wasn’t coming and turned down her ticket. father “spoke to her” and said she had to at least give it a try and he would find the money for her to go back to England if necessary. So she and her brother trekked down to London to the NZ high commission to beg for ticket back, (luckily she was an officers wife).
Out she came. Housing was in short supply, 3 married couples lived with his parents. One couple in a sunroom accessed through my in-laws bedroom! Despite this all three couples managed to conceive! F in law got a rehab loan and they were able to build a TINY house. Then she took baby and went back to Liverpool. She stayed a year, and then came back. Just as well as my husband born after that!
-
My Dad was a medic in the Canadian Army and was stationed near Brighton during WWII. He met my Mom at a dance at the COOP in 1943 and they were married in 1945. He was shipped back home after the war but my Mom had to wait almost a year to see him again as she was pregnant with me. But in 1946 my Mom and I came to Canada on a troop ship with many other war brides and their children. If not for the war I know they would never have met. The war brought them together and they had a long wonderful life together here in Canada. Unfortunately my Mom never saw her own Mom again and was only able to visit England once in later years.
-
My mother's first husband (a lady's man) was in the army and away from his wife & son, this eventually lead to divorce. My father, (born in Manchester but living in Canada) was posted to the England where he met my mother (and her son), they later married and had 3 other children, I being the youngest.
You could say the war was both the reason of the break up of my mother's first marriage and the meeting of her second husband.
Cheers
Guy
-
My parents met during WW2 when my father knocked on my mother's door looking for family of an army mate. My father was a country boy and I doubt he would have left there but for the war. Mum was a city girl.
Looking back to WW1 my maternal grandparents married in 1915, but he wasn't in the forces as he had TB. My paternal grandparents married after the war and I have found no record of him serving.
-
Both my parents came to the UK from Europe, as children before the outbreak of WWll.
The British Forces would not recruit aliens of course, but they were enlisted by the American Forces as translators, which is how they met.
-
A young man from West Yorkshire, working in a woollen mill in 1939, joined the Army. He met a young widow in Liverpool. She was in domestic service and had a young daughter from her first marriage.
They married in Yorkshire in 1941 when the daughter was six. After the war ended, they had a son together but eventually divorced. I'm married to their son, who wouldn't exist if that soldier hadn't been sent to Liverpool and hadn't been willing to take care of the little girl as well as her mother.
(Btw both of our fathers were in the Royal Corps of Signals in WW2 and were at Monte Cassino. They'd both died before we met, but you can't help wondering whether their paths might have crossed.)
Carol
-
Thanks everyone for sharing their stories. It's really good to know that information like this is getting passed down through the generations. I'm so glad that I've heard stories from my grandparents' generation, but unfortunately I've heard very few stories from the previous generation, i.e. my great-grandparents.
I have two sets of great-grandparents that married shortly after WW1, but no information about how they met. One couple both grew up in the same small town and married in 1919, so I suspect that their paths may have crossed even if the war hadn't happened.
The couple I'm most curious about married in 1919 - he came from a farming family in Shropshire, she came from an industrial area of the West Midlands, not too many miles away as the crow flies. His brothers all married local girls. I have no information about what he did during the war - no army records found, and no stories passed down through the generations - so I wonder if the war played some part in him spending time away from the farm and meeting his future wife in her home town.
-
My parents paths wouldn't have crossed had it not been for WWII... some might say it would have been better if they hadn't... my fathers wife for one and my half siblings... but then I wouldn't be here!
Both my parents lived in Egypt, my mother from 1922 with my grandparents and my father from 1930 who was in the Palestine Police after leaving the tank reg in 1931.
When war broke out my mother aged 19 was back in Cairo on holiday and would have returned to UK to continue her studies... my grandfather left Cairo in 1938 leaving my grandmother and mother on their own!
My mother couldn't / unable to return to UK joined The British Embassy working in the decoding dept, there she became very good friends with a married lady Bella almost 10 years older than herself ( my fathers wife!) I expect Bella took pity on mum as my grandmother died in 1940 leaving my mum on her own!
Bella and my father had two children in 1943 and 1944, my half siblings. My father was CO of the ROAC and met my mother when she came to their house and the rest is history so to speak...
I'm a little confused with the circumstances though as my half sister told me one night Bella suggested our father took mum to a function as she couldn't go having two small children... but I have photos of them together well before 1943 so think something was going on long before that!
In 1950 they all left Egypt together ( for heavens sake!) and our father arranged for one of his Sargent's to find a home for Bella and the two children! Very odd set up!
They never divorced but after 1954 our father never saw his children again! They went to Canada in 1959 and we went to Ethiopia in 1955.
I only found all this out after my father had died and my mother would never talk about it!
Through wonderful people on this site I found my half siblings met them and pieced the story together!
Sadly I've no contact with them now... think they just wanted to 'meet and see' but hey ho that's life!
So really the war wrecked more than one families lives but I'm here to tell the tale because of those circumstances... like so many others I'm sure.
Caroline