War and Weddings

         By the time Britain declared war on Nazi Germany on September 3, 1939, it was taken for granted all the countries of the Commonwealth would also declare war, and so it was.  Before the end of the year there were hundreds of young Canadians training in facilities near Frensham, and we saw many of them roaming our town during their leisure time.  It seemed natural our young women would be attracted to these soldiers from so far away, and my Eileen was no exception.

         She had been working for several years, and by the time war came along she was also serving as a volunteer in one of the Canadian canteens near Aldershot, on the weekends.   I wasn’t surprised when she announced she had met someone and was going to spend some time keeping him company, since he was lonely, like most of them.  When she brought him home after a few outings I could tell she was in love, and he seemed to be as well. 

I learned it was just he and his mother at home in Montreal, and that she had emigrated from Scotland at the beginning of the century.  Young Len took an instant dislike to Allan.  He went about shouting what all our young English men were saying.  “Them Canadians – over paid, over sexed, and bloody over here!”

            Meanwhile, by 1940 the war began to get serious.  After conquering Begium, Holland, Denmark and France, Hitler turned his attention on us in Britain. Although over three million people (mostly children and their caregivers) had been evacuated from the London area, it still seemed the Lutwaffe wanted everyone in the big cities dead.  Our ponds, Big Pond and Little Pond, were drained, since their reflection pointed the way directly to London. 

         My attention was only half on the war though, for at the end of June my Eileen married her Allan in a quiet wedding, in the church where she had been christened.  I had many private misgivings, but I was young enough to remember how the urgency of wartime makes young couples seize the day, for who know how long they have.  I did not tell Eileen what to expect, for in those days one didn’t, but nevertheless she glowed with happiness as she sent her husband back to war after their weekend honeymoon spent in her upstairs bedroom.  Then we settled in to deal with the war.