Free GI Brides: The Wartime Girls Who Crossed the Atlantic for Love by Nuala Duncan; Calvi Barrett

see was Raymond. Rae had kept him at arm’s length when they first met, but now she found she desperately wanted him around. Fortunately, since they were married, he was able to put in a request for her to be stationed closer to him.
    Rae was hoping she might be sent back to Mansfield where her friends were, and looked forward to returning to her old, happy life. But it was not to be. The best the Army could do was a post twenty miles south in Chilwell, a suburb of Nottingham. Reluctantly, Rae packed her bags and headed to the depot, which was the largest in the Royal Army Ordnance Corps.
    At least Raymond could now visit her every weekend. The miscarriage had made her feel more connected to him, and it was good to have his big strong arms around her again.
    But the reunion was short-lived, and soon Raymond was sent away to Wales for training, more than 200 miles away. Rae knew all too well what he was training for. D-Day was looming and his hospital unit would be required to deal with the inevitable casualties on the far shore. Raymond was going into the battlefield, and Rae had no way of knowing if he would ever come back.

7

Margaret
    â€˜Margaret Joy Boyle, will you take Captain Lawrence McCaskill Rambo to be your husband? Will you love him, comfort him, honour and protect him, and, forsaking all others, be faithful to him as long as you both shall live?’
    â€˜I will.’
    As she said the words, Margaret just hoped that the skirt suit she was wearing was doing a convincing job of hiding her pregnancy. She was now five months along, but thankfully it wasn’t showing too much.
    Her attempt at aborting the baby had failed, and she had been left with no option but to tell Lawrence everything. To his credit, he had proved a Southern gentleman in deed as well as manner, and had immediately said he loved her and wanted to marry her. She knew she was lucky – many GIs who got their girlfriends pregnant simply put in for a transfer and were never heard of again, and the army hierarchy was adept at blocking women from tracking down errant fathers.
    Margaret and Lawrence had waited until after her twenty-first birthday in October 1943, so that no explanation had to be given to her parents. Not that either of them had come to the wedding. Margaret had written to her mother in Ireland but received no reply, and her father was once again overseas with the Army. Her grandmother had come up to London from Canterbury for the service. Sitting in the front pew of St Mary Abbots in Kensington she looked on disapprovingly. She couldn’t understand why her granddaughter had decided to marry an American of all people.
    With so few guests at the ceremony there was no reception to speak of, and Margaret and Lawrence went back to the flat he had rented for them in Pembridge Villas, Notting Hill.
    Margaret knew she wasn’t in love with her new husband, but by force of will she had put her old boyfriend, Taylor Drysdale, out of her head and was trying her best to focus on Lawrence instead. There were certainly things to recommend him. They had a love of books in common, and he was intelligent and charismatic. He was a decent man, and hadn’t deserted her.
    Moreover, he had told her that his family in Georgia owned a lot of land, so she gathered that the Rambos were wealthy. His descriptions of growing up in a beautiful white Greek Revival mansion sounded like something from Gone with the Wind , and Margaret began to look forward to one day going to Georgia.
    Once she was married, Margaret left her job at the ETOUSA headquarters and spent most of her time sitting at home reading novels. One day in December, when she was only seven and a half months pregnant, she felt a warm liquid trickle down her leg. She looked down and to her horror realised that her waters were breaking.
    She heaved herself up, walked as quickly as she could to the phone in the hall and called an ambulance. As she was rushed to Hammersmith