In June 1944 I met Dad; I saw him for the first time at a lecture given at a Jewish country Club near our house; The American soldiers arrived at Easter 1944 and were “billeted privately” in our neighborhood; the residents were simply assigned one or two soldiers, according to how much space there was. We were told they were all college-educated boys, all proficient in a language, and would be part of the army of occupation. There were many German Jews among them and that Jewish Country Club near us offered them hospitality and encouraged neighborhood girls to come there, even though we were not members. Dad and I had three false starts: Dad asked me whether I was so-and-so (a girl he had once known) and evidently would not take “no” for an answer, because he asked me the same question again a few days later. I finally had the fellow with him tell him who I was. After that one evening -everyone was just hanging out at that club- I was sitting at a table with a girl I knew, whom he evidently knew too, but I was English enough in those days not to talk to anyone who was not introduced to me! Grace (her name) was about the ugliest girl I ever knew; as fate would have it, she sneezed, and Dad and I. in the same breath, came out with the same German saying “God preserve your beauty” and we both immediately burst out laughing! He took me home and that was the beginning; we dated every day as long as Dad was still stationed in Manchester ( which was until the first of September). He was a staff sergeant when I met him. Dad had told me right away that he was married, but also explained to me that he had married Alice Joseph to give her American citizenship so that she could work legally. He evidently had looked unsuccessfully for a Jewish girl he could relate to and had given up his search as hopeless (as you know, he never had much self-confidence!).
...
When I met Dad I already had made a reservation for a one week vacation in North Wales with a friend; vacation accommodation was few and far between during the war and we were lucky to have found this. So Dad sat for hours on the train to visit me for ONE day on his day off! It was typical English weather, cold and drizzly, and we had nowhere where we could sit and talk; the room Erika and I shared was tiny, so we just sat on the pebbly beach amidst the sea gulls (they were breeding in that area and they are pretty dirty birds!), shivering! I can’t remember where we ate, some tea-room I suppose.The place was Llandudno, a quite popular resort, but as I said, everything was different during the war: hotels were closed or taken over, few tourists.were about, trains were few and far between, vacations always ran from Saturday to Saturday. Dad came to see me one last time the night before his Military Government detachment was shipped out; they already were relocated somewhere outside Manchester. Spitler (“Cap”) was his commanding officer then, he had brought him over one day to meet me. They went to Germany, via France and Belgium (where he got caught in the Battle of the Bulge) and at the end of the war he was sent to Berlin, General Eisenhower’s command. The arrangement was that Dad would come to England on leave before returning to the States. He got his leave, but the Channel was shrouded in pea soup fog, and nothing was moving. So he sat in Calais, waiting for the fog to lift, while I was standing at the window in Manchester, looking at the same fog. His leave was up and he had to return to Berlin.
I think I have now arrived at the point where I met Dad; I have told that story so often that I am not sure whether I have already written it down, but here goes again: I am sure we were meant to meet, because it took three attempts before we actually did. (In those days I was still British enough not to talk to anyone I was not introduced to!) This is the story of “Grace’s Sneeze”. Our meetings had all been at a small Jewish country Club down the street from me who were entertaining GIs and asked the girls in the neighborhood to the dances they gave for the boys (I had never been a member of the Club). Dad approached me by asking me whether I was so-and-so, and when he did it a third time I took it for an American gimmick and put him in his place. Poor ugly Grace finally quite inadvertently made our meeting happen, that’s why I always maintain that we were just meant to meet. Dad was a Staff Sergeant in the Medical Service Corps, an NCO in other words, so it was not the glamour of the uniform that attracted me! It must have been destiny, because he was not “my type”, i.e. instead of tall and dark he was on the short side (5’9” I believe) and blond! We were together every day when he did not pull KP which was not too often luckily. Long before we met I had already planned to go on a vacation to Wales (vacation spots were exceedingly hard to come by because most hotels were either closed or commandeered by the Military, also one could only book from Saturday to Saturday) with another girl. Her name was Erika Schwartz, but I have no idea what became of her Henry managed to get a 24hour pass to come to visit me in Llandudno during that week! He traveled overnight and got not much more than six hours to spend with me. sitting shivering in the rain on a hard pebble beach surrounded by screaming (and very dirty) sea gulls! Later that summer I got sick. - my only bout of jaundice in my whole life! The evening I started being ill there was a party in his regiment and I had gone out to buy a new dress for that; it was not what I usually might have bought and he disliked it. And forever more we referred to it as the “Fever Dress”. I think I was in bed for a week or so, but he came to see me every day anyway (my mother was the chaperone!). After 75 days, in early September 1944 (we started dating on June 24) he was shipped out, destination “ETO” (European Theatre of Operations). They landed at Omaha Beach, luckily not with the invasion forces any more, but they still had to wade up the beach! The first day or two after leaving they had not got very far from Manchester, so he still visited one more time (this was the evening when he really committed himself to our future together) and could telephone. My letters to him which I found in a footlocker upstairs, start with a letter I wrote to him the evening he left for this Manchester location, September 2 1944, after I saw him off on the #42 bus that was carrying him away. My life was really very miserable by then, my father kept getting worse, my mother was giving as many lessons as she could line up, and I spent a lot of my evenings keeping my father company.
...
On the 19th of October I at last got my first letter (dated the 13th), in which H. evidently alluded to Pharaoh’s dream ! What we did get eventually was six lean years and 53 fat ones, for which I shall be eternally grateful. I thought I could transcribe the letters a bit so that all three of my children could have copies, but that is a task I am not up to. Despite some pretty poetic love passages the letters are quite interesting, I think, and give an insight into life in end-of-war England, very well written by a 24-year old; so I hope that at some time they will get to read them. For some reason the last of this batch of letters is dated Feb.5, 1945 , letter # 133. A crucial letter is #112 of Jan.12, 1945, which (significantly?) was left in its envelope, whereas all others were in a nice even pile. This is the letter in which I asked him to write to Alice or I would have to break it up Strangely # 113, 114 and 115 are missing, so are 131 and 132 and nothing after that. Seeing that my mother had destroyed all of Henry’s letters to me (why on Earth she did that I shall never understand), I do not know/remember what happened afterwards. I seem to remember that he was supposed to get leave to England, that he got stuck in Calais where there was a” pea-soup” fog and nothing could move on the Channel, and he had to return to Berlin (where he was on a temporary assignment) because his leave was up, and that suddenly there was a big clamor in the States that “our boys” didn’t come home fast enough , so all leaves and leave applications were canceled and they were shipped home in a great hurry. (They should do that with Viet Nam!!) I can’t remember how much longer I heard from him after that nor what, but I gave him an ultimatum, divorce now or I have to break it up, it is too unbearable for me.
Another version, from email to Magdalen for a school project:
It was spring 1944, ...
Then one day the word went out "the Yanks are coming": some officers WW2 City of Manchester ARP Mobile First Aid Post went from house to house in our area to find out how many American boys could be billeted privately. My father was sick, and our house was a subdivided duplex, so we were not assigned anybody, but plenty of neighborhood houses took one or two.
There was a little private country club a few houses down from us, and after the boys arrived (just before Pessach) they had an open invitation to the club, and the local girls, members or not (I was not a member) were welcome too. There were events like lectures and also dances. The "local boys" were serving elsewhere in the military and the girls were more than anxious to meet the Yanks. Mothers were at ease, because even before their arrival we had been told that they were all college-educated and specially selected for living in private homes (they were all in Military Government, they had their own mess hall -a prefabricated Nissen Hut - where they ate).
So, lo and behold, one day I spotted (or he spotted me actually) your Papa. He was with another guy, and he came up to me and asked me whether by any chance I was such-and-such. NOw this was an old trick to meet someone, ask whether it was someone one had met before, and I said "no", period. But a few days later I met the same fellow and he asked me the same question (later he told me that it wasn't a pretext, that I actually looked a lot like that person). Anyway, he was with some fellow who knew me so I told him that he could find out from him who I was. So some more time passed before we ran into each other again: this time nothing was going on at the club I just sat at a table with another girl and Henry came along and sat at the other side of her; he had met her elsewhere, I barely knew her, she did not introduce us. And then she SNEEZED. Now, there is a German way to say "G-d bless your beauty" (instead of just"bless you") and both Papa and I said it in the same breath - {and the girl was one of the ugliest I ever knew!}. So, of course, we both burst out laughing (to this day this is our private joke) and the ice was broken. As they say: "the rest is history"