ENGLISH GIRLS ON D-DAY

English girls and young women got engaged during WWII, some more than once.

My English mother in law had been engaged several times. I asked her about it.

Me: You were engaged five times before you married?

MIL: Yes, my girlfriends and I were all engaged several time. We knew the soldiers going into the fight and wanted them to remember why.

Me: Like a good luck charm?

MIL: After WWI the men came home to hard times if they came home at all. We wanted them to know they had a better future.

Me: Did any of the men you were engaged to come home?

MIL: No, they didn’t. And if they did, they weren’t the same. I never saw them after the war.

Me: Didn’t they want to get married before they shipped out?

MIL: Of course, but the English girls I knew didn’t marry them.

Me: So it was a symbolic engagement.

MIL: You were in the Army. Didn’t you have girls writing you?

Me: No, but my mom had some friends and she asked their daughters to write to me.

MIL: Didn’t you enjoy getting mail from them?

Me: Yes, I did. I liked that they didn’t send letters in scented envelopes.

MIL: And why is that?

Me: The guy handing out mail made a big deal out of scented envelopes, guessing what the scent was, where it came from, and what the soldier was planning on doing with the envelope.

MIL: Were they just going to open it and read the letter? What else would they do?

Me: Mine weren’t scented, so I don’t know what they planned, but the mail guy had ideas. Did you write letters to your engagement partners?

MIL: Yes, we all did. I hope they saved them, too. What did you do with your letters?

Me: I had friends from Hungary and Korea and I used the letters to help learn English.

MIL: Like a teaching tool. Very good. Were they good writers?

Me: They thought the letters were funny. They understood the language better than the girls who wrote letters.

MIL: You shared, then?

Me: These girls were the daughters of my mom’s friends. I didn’t meet them, so they were doing a nice thing by writing.

MIL: Did you write back?

Me: My buddies wrote back and I helped them. They learned more than any language class they’d had.

MIL: What did they write?

Me: They didn’t show me, but eventually the letters stopped coming. It was sad. No engagements.

MIL: Remember visiting your aunt in Cambridge?

Me: Yes. She was dating Prince Charles’ tutor.

MIL: And she took you to the American Cemetery there?

Me: It was very solemn.

MIL: She was nurse during D-Day.

Me: She didn’t tell us that.

MIL: I’m not surprised. She said the memory is awful from all of the wounded and dead young men leaving the beaches.

Me: She was on duty for that?

MIL: Yes, she was.

Me: It sounds awful.

MIL: She hasn’t said much about it over the years since. We bury some memories deep.