Bury St Edmunds exhibition at The Guildhall, Love and War in Suffolk, will tell the impact of World War Two on relationships
When World War Two plunged Britain into its darkest hour, countless couples were torn apart. For most the separation was temporary. For others it ended in tragedy.
But love also blossomed . . . often between people who without the conflict would never have met.
In April, the stories of couples from different countries brought together by war will be told in an exhibition at the Guildhall in Bury St Edmunds.
“Love and War in Suffolk will explore the impact that the war had on romantic relationships in Suffolk, with its unique position being so close to Europe,” said Guildhall heritage officer Katie Everard.
Service personnel from allied nations were stationed at airbases in the county, which was also the site of prisoner of war and resettlement camps.
“Alongside the pressures of wartime conditions, and separated from loved ones, unique bonds were formed,” said Katie. “Some of these bonds were enduring, others were fleeting, but each left behind a legacy that feeds into Suffolk’s rich history.”
Personal objects, testimonies, photographs, love letters and diaries will be on show, and the Guildhall team is calling for more people who would be willing to share their family stories to get in touch.
Guildhall volunteer Catherine Buchanan has been researching Suffolk’s so-called GI brides, who married USAAF servicemen and left their home county to live in America.
She searched for weddings and engagements in the Bury Free Press archives, then, armed with the names, went to an online ancestry site to trace their families and discover what happened to them.
One of those she contacted is Amber Heard, the granddaughter of GI bride Joyce Allen, from Bury.
Joyce and US Air Force armourer Melvin Korb met at a dance in Lavenham in 1944 and married a few months later.
Amber, who lives in Arizona, takes up the story of her much-loved ‘Nana and Pop’, who helped her mother to raise her after her parents divorced.
“Joyce went to a dance with her sister Daisy. As my pop told it, she asked him to hold her coat while she was dancing with one of his buddies.
“When she came back for her coat she asked him to dance and his reply was ‘Okay, if it’s a slow one’ and the rest was history,” she said.
Joyce was born in Bury in 1924. Melvin, born in 1922 in Baltimore, was stationed with the 487th bomb group at Lavenham airfield.
They married on October 21, 1944 in Lavenham. “They didn’t have enough rations for sugar so they made a chocolate cake for their wedding cake. She wore her sister’s dress,” said Amber.
When the war ended Joyce was one of thousands of GI brides who travelled by sea to join their husbands.
“She came over on the Queen Mary by herself as Melvin had already been sent back to America. She never learned to swim, so the journey – leaving her home and family and setting out by water – was very scary.
“They settled in Baltimore. At first it was difficult for Joyce because the American women were mad at her for taking an American man. They weren’t very nice to her. But I never heard her complain.”
Melvin learned how to repair cars and went on to own a succession of body and paint shops.
The couple had four children. Amber’s mother, Debra, was the youngest. By the time Amber was born they were living in Arizona, and Melvin had opened his last business, where he worked until he was 85.
“He taught me how to sand down the hood of a car or tape off the frame to be painted. He taught me hard work always paid off,” she said.
“We always gathered together for Sunday breakfast. Any holiday, you could find us at Nana and Pop’s. They helped raise me as my parents divorced when I was four.
“We had a very close bond. Nana and Pop were the core of our family.
“Joyce was a prim and proper, classy, strong woman. I always remember her dressed so nicely, never wearing jeans but rather dress slacks and high heels.
“I loved to play dress-up in her costume jewellery. This is why I chose to design and draw my own clothing, and go into fashion merchandise as a degree.
“Melvin was hard working and stubborn, and above all else they lived life to the fullest, loving their family with all they had.”
Joyce and Melvin were married for 56 years until her death in 2001. He died nine years later.
But not all outcomes were happy. For some GI brides dreams of a prosperous, even glamorous, new life in a new country ended in disillusionment. The reality was often much tougher.
“The adjustment must have been enormous. If the marriages didn’t survive it’s not surprising,” said Catherine.
Other girls were left pregnant and a home for unmarried mothers abandoned by their American boyfriends was set up in Bury.
Black US servicemen who fell for English girls were denied permission to marry by their commanding officers and sent back to America.
Professor Lucy Bland, whose book, Britain’s Brown Babies, tells the story of mixed race children left behind, is also providing information and giving a talk during the exhibition.
The Guildhall already has a unique connection to World War Two. It housed the Royal Observer Corps operations room, which can still be seen and is the only one in the country to be preserved.
“With us also being a wedding venue, the subject sat quite well with the history of the building and what we currently do,” said Katie.
“War themes quite often draw in people who are interested in war, but looking at the relationships opens it up to a bigger audience.”
The story of Sybil Ranson and Marion Laskowski has a special link to the Guildhall because during the war she worked in the ROC ops room as well as serving in the Women’s Land Army.
Marion was a Polish soldier who was given the chance to settle in Britain after the war.
Their son, Peter Langdon, tells how his mother, who came from Lawshall and worked on a farm there, would do a shift in the ops room then cycle the eight miles back in time to milk the cows.
She also had a narrow escape while out on the farm.
“Two Messerschmitts came over and fired at them and they had to throw themselves under a tractor to avoid being hit,” said Peter. Another time a plane crashed in the field where she was working.
Marion was 12 years old when German forces invaded his homeland and still in his early teens when he was sent to a labour camp for spitting in the eye of a youth officer.
He escaped twice – the second time finding his way with a friend into France. Later they made their way into Italy where he managed to join up with the Polish army.
He served in the communications corps of a force led by General Anders which fought alongside allies in Italy in some of the fiercest battles of the war.
After the war, with Poland taken over by Russia, many Polish troops were given the chance to settle in England rather than return to live under the communist regime.
Marion, with no idea if his parents and seven siblings had survived, came to a resettlement camp in Suffolk, was found lodgings in Bury, and worked as a waiter in a hotel.
“One day he was in Bury and mum was selling flags for charity. He went and bought a flag then went back and bought three more. That was how they met,” said Peter, who has a sister, Angela.
The couple married on Boxing Day 1948. Marion, who changed his name to Michael Langdon in the 1950s, was a porter at West Suffolk Hospital then became stockroom manager at Woolworths, in Bury, where he worked until he retired. Sybil also worked on the counters at Woolworths for many years.
Later, in the 1950s, Michael was able to get back in touch with his Polish family – his parents were still alive – and take his family there for holidays.
Karin Froch’s parents, Erich and June, are another couple whose story will feature . . . and it is all the more extraordinary because their countries were on opposing sides in the war.
When Erich, an ex-prisoner of war from Germany who made a new life in Suffolk, was dying of cancer, he told Karin he hoped he would be remembered.
So it means a lot to her to be able to share her parents’ love story for the exhibition. “Often it’s the big battles that get mentioned in the history books, and this is more about the little people who get caught up in that. This is a way of keeping him alive,” she said.
Karin’s mum, June Manning, was born in Thurston. She survived TB as a child and went to Bury’s Silver Jubilee School. “Mum was in the Girls’ Brigade, and was treasurer for a club in the village. Later she worked for Smiths furnishers in Bury.”
Karin’s dad, Erich Froch, who was 10 years older than her mother, was born in 1924 in Mülheim an der Ruhr. “He had a lovely childhood, his parents owned an inn, and he loved to be outside,” she said.
Erich joined the German army as an anti-tank gunner and was wounded in action. Later he was sent to France where, after D-Day, he got separated from his unit and captured – finishing up in PoW camps in the UK.
Eventually he was sent to the camp at Hardwick Heath in Bury. “By that time the war had already ended but he wasn’t released until 1948,” said Karin.
“He was working on a farm owned by the Banks family and they took him under their wing. When he was released he had to go back to Germany to be demobbed.”
Erich’s brother had been taken prisoner and put in a Russian camp, where he died of heart failure. His mother died not long afterwards . . . the family believed of a broken heart.
“Dad had lost his mum and brother and was estranged from his father. Their house had been bombed.
“He had been promised work by the Banks family and somewhere to live, so he came back to England almost immediately.
“Mum and Dad met through friends in the early 1950s. They were married in Thurston and set up home there.
“He built the house my brother Bob and I now share – the whole family got involved, and people in the village helped as well.
“When mum first started going out with him, and they were going to get married, some of the family were saying ‘oh my God, the children are going to be half German’.
“But he got very little negative treatment. It’s easy to have bad feelings for people when you don’t know them, but that can change when you meet them.”
After working on the farm, Erich became a pipe layer for the Banks’s building company. He worked there until the early 1970s when he had an accident, and then repaired motorcycles and scooters for a living.
- If anyone has a story they would like to be included in the exhibition, or mementoes such as photographs, Valentine cards or even wedding dresses, please email tellus@burystedmundsguildhall.org.uk as soon as possible.
