SCENES LIKE THIS were common after World War II as hundreds of thousands of WAR BRIDES FROM AROUND THE WORLD alighted from ships, trains and sometimes planes to join their new husbands in a new country. Nothing unusual for the family to be a bit larger than it was when they’d separated. But it wasn’t all hearts and flowers for the brides, who had left often-disapproving families over there and were accused of being opportunists or worse over here. Sometimes they didn’t get what they’d bargained for, like the woman who took one look at the “country house” her husband had promised (it turned out to be “just a shack … [with] no electricity and no plumbing,” she said) and turned tail for New York. But the husbands/dads had their problems too, starting with the evil eye they got from the girls they had jilted.
– Estimated number of AMERICAN GIS WHO MARRIED BRITISH WOMEN during and right after World War II: 100,000.
– Percentage of U.S. service people today who have children: 43.5.
– Increase in the likelihood that a soldier would seek a divorce after seeing combat in Iraq or Afghanistan: 66 PERCENT.
– Number of war grooms on the S.S. ARGENTINA, which carried the first official group of war brides to America in January 1946: 1.
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“Under the brashness and puppy-like friendliness of the Americans were very homesick young men.”
–WAR BRIDE JOAN CATER, EXPLAINING THE GIS’ APPEAL
Sources: Tribune archives, news reports, “War Brides of World War II” by Elfrieda Berthiaume Shukert and Barbara Smith Scibetta (Presidio, 1988).
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nwatkins@tribune.com
