Did your ancestors meet because of war?

[clairec666]

Discussion started in 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.

[Wendy2305]

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

[Chilternbirder]

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.

[tillypeg]

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.

[dowdstree]

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
 

[Creasegirl]

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

[sami]

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

[Jo.]

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

[clairec666]

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.