GI Brides: June

By Duncan Barrett and Calvi

She left everything behind to follow her heart …

The enthralling true story of a British war bride after World War II.

June Baker saw the American soldier walking toward her. In the gray of wartime England, he looked out of place—as if a blond movie star had just dropped out of the sky. They had a whirlwind courtship, and June fell in love with and married Borgy, the handsome GI from St. Charles, Missouri. She eagerly anticipated her new life in America. But when the war ended, June was horrified to learn they'd be moving to Germany—land of the enemy—instead. And just like that, June's unexpected journey began …

June's story is a bonus installment of the international bestseller GI Brides.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Oct 7, 2014
• ISBN: 9780062383174

Duncan Barrett

Duncan Barrett & Nuala Calvi are the bestselling authors of GI Brides and The Sugar Girls. Duncan studied English at Cambridge and now works as a writer and editor, specializing in biography and memoir. Nuala is a writer and journalist. She trained at London College of Printing and has written for The Times, The Independent, the BBC, CNN, and numerous Time Out books. They both live in London.

Book preview

Chapter 1

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‘Last orders, please!’ Mr Baker called, ringing the bell at the bar.

His daughter June sighed as she finished pulling a pint of Ansells for one of the Irish labourers who were in Birmingham working for the war effort. Not long now, she thought, glancing up at the clock on the wall, which read five to ten. The hordes of drinkers were already well past merry, and she was exhausted from being on her feet all evening after a long day at work.

At the other end of the bar, she could see her dad’s short, stubby arms gesticulating as he recounted one of his favourite stories, prompting a group of regulars to burst into raucous laughter. Mr Baker had only been running the Lister Tavern for a couple of years, after leaving his job making parts for tanks at the Austin car factory, but it was clear that he had found his vocation, and he loved holding court with the punters. At the pub, he was also perfectly placed to conduct his various black-market deals – down in the cellar, secret stashes of anything from petrol to ladies’ coats could often be found amid the beer barrels.

Mrs Baker tottered over in her high heels. With her flaming red hair and ostentatious hat – one of many she owned – she had an air of faded glamour about her. ‘Pour me another brandy and soda, love,’ she said, holding out her glass. June did as she was told, then watched her mother totter off again. Mrs Baker had a tendency to overindulge – not helped by the fact that the punters often bought her drinks. She always described herself as the last of the party girls, and June had often heard stories about her days as a flapper in the Twenties.

Both June’s parents were outgoing, gregarious types – as was her younger sister Pam – and June often wondered how they had ended up with such a shy daughter as herself. She was a delicate girl, just five foot three, with a porcelain complexion and a rounded, doll-like face, and she barely looked her sixteen years. She didn’t feel she had the thick skin required for pub life.

One of the Irishmen came up to buy another round of beers, and June began pulling the pints, doing her best to resist his attempts to draw her into conversation. She took the man’s money and went to get the change out of the till, but when she put it in his hand, he eyed it suspiciously.

‘You’ve given me the wrong change here,’ he complained.

‘I don’t think so,’ June replied quietly.

‘Are you calling me a liar, now?’ he demanded.

‘No, I –’

‘Well, count it again then!’ he shouted, throwing the coins back at her.

Her eyes pricking with tears, June scrambled around on the floor trying to pick up the money, but by the time she stood up again the man had already wandered off with his drinks.

To her relief her father bellowed, ‘Time at the bar, gentlemen!’ and June gratefully fled upstairs to her bedroom. She wished she never had to work in the pub again.

June’s parents had met through their mutual love of dance, and they had cut quite a figure together. With his dramatic nature, Mr Baker favoured the tango, while Mrs Baker preferred the charleston. She was crazy about her husband, but he had always had a wandering eye and often complained to June, ‘If it hadn’t been for you coming along, I never would have married your mother.’ Mrs Baker, meanwhile, wasn’t exactly maternal, and June often wondered if she had wanted children herself.

June couldn’t have been more different from her parents. From her earliest years, she had known exactly what she wanted in life – to be a housewife and mother. She longed for a home of her own, and as a child she had set up a hidey house in the shed where her father kept his tools, putting up some lace curtains donated by her grandmother and taking her dinner out there every night to eat alone at a little makeshift table and chairs. She adored babies, and her most precious possession was a china doll given to her by Grandma Baker, complete with real baby’s christening clothes. As she grew older, June would beg the neighbourhood mums to let her take their children out in their prams, and walked with them for hours, pretending they were hers.

Perhaps her love of babies stemmed from having lost a little brother, Derek, to pneumonia when she was just four years old. Her earliest memory was watching from a neighbour’s window as her parents disappeared into a big black car, and being told that they were going to her brother’s funeral. Derek’s death had come during the Great Depression, at a time when the Bakers were struggling to make ends meet. When the girls’ shoes wore out, their father had made soles for them out of cardboard, since there had been no money for new ones. He had taken all manner of odd jobs, including a stint as the doorman at the Odeon, and would sometimes sneak his daughters into the matinees. June grew up loving the glamorous world of the Hollywood movies, which provided an escape from the grim reality of life in 1930s Birmingham.

June had been twelve when war broke out, and suddenly school days were punctuated by drill practice, and meals reduced to dreary rounds of beans on toast and spam, thanks to rationing. She and her sister Pam were evacuated to Wales, where they stayed with a family who only spoke Welsh – as did their new schoolmates, who excluded them completely. ‘Dad, please come and get me – I don’t like it here!’ June had begged in her letters home, and eventually Mr Baker had reclaimed his daughters, driving them all the way back to Birmingham in his little Austin 7, powered by black-market petrol.

The following year, the Birmingham Blitz began. More than 2,000 local people lost their lives and many more were made homeless. Only London and Liverpool suffered more casualties at the hands of the Luftwaffe.

Mr and Mrs Baker refused to have an Anderson shelter in their back garden, however, and preferred to take their chances in their beds. Their one concession to safety was putting the children to sleep under the stairs when the air-raid siren sounded. Most nights Mr Baker was out anyway, since he was an air-raid warden, and sometimes he took June on his rounds with him. It was frightening witnessing the terrible fires burning all over the city, but June preferred to be outside, hearing her father blow confidently on his whistle, rather than cowed under the stairs with her sister.

June’s grandparents had a lucky escape when a bomb landed right outside their house. It came in at an angle and went under the building, doing some minor damage, but did not explode – and when the bomb squad came to disarm it, they soon discovered why. Inside the shell case was a note that read, ‘From your friends in Czechoslovakia’. The prison-camp workers who had constructed the bomb had kindly left out the fuse.

June knew that many people were less lucky than her own family. One night, Mr Baker had bundled his wife and children into the car and driven them up into the hills. June had sat and stared, transfixed by the immense fires raging in the distance. It looked as if her whole city was being burned to the ground.

June left school at fourteen and, keen to get away from pub life, volunteered for the Land Army. She had seen the posters showing girls cradling baby lambs under the words ‘Back to the land. We must all lend a hand’. Having never been outside the city except for her brief period as an evacuee, she pictured an idyllic scene of rustic bliss.

June and her fellow new recruits were taken by bus to a farm some way outside Birmingham, where to her horror they were issued with manly corduroy trousers and clumping great boots. The next day they were up at dawn, and set to work digging potatoes. It was back-breaking, and while the other girls were hardy types who seemed unfazed by the physical labour, the diminutive June struggled to keep up, her shovel barely breaking the stone-hard earth.

It was almost dark by the time the girls returned to the farmhouse, and they had built up an enormous appetite from their exertions, but the meal provided by the farmer’s wife was far from hearty.

After dinner, June was looking forward to a nice hot bath to relieve her sore muscles and wash away the mud that was now caked onto her skin and hair, but she discovered that there were to be no such luxuries. Each girl was allowed a small bowl of cold water to perform her ablutions, before lights-out at 9 p.m.

As she lay shivering under a thin blanket, June realised she had made a terrible mistake. Being a Land Girl was far from the fluffy experience the posters had suggested, and there could be few girls less cut out for hard labour than she was. Within days she was back home.

June’s father quickly saw to it that she was contributing to the family finances, however. Her headteacher’s reference had declared her ‘pleasing in her manner and appearance’ and ‘fastidious about details’, and it was enough

Reviews for GI Brides

[patsaintsfan · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

GI Brides explores the lives of four British women who marry American soldiers during World War II. They fall in love with a military soldier, marry, and emigrate to the United States with their military husbands. While each woman married for love, they mostly struggled with their new life in the United States. What followed was mostly disappointment and sadness. This was a rather depressing read overall, but I was glad I read it. I'm sure it was an extremely difficult time. I liked the content, but the writing was poor. I won this through a LibraryThing giveaway! Thank you!

[jcgirl-1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

GI Bride tells the life and loves of four young girls who fall in love with and marry four G.I.'s, set during World War II and after. I was surprised to learn how difficult it was for American G.I.'s to marry a woman from Britain and the European Union, but so many did even though the diversity. I found fascinating the stories the authors told of the women's trouble getting to America and how they became accustom to a new life in the USA. A true story which I didn't realize until the end. I enjoyed this book because it was entertaining and informative and shows life is not all like a romantic movie.

[terribooks · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Really interesting stories of several women who married soldiers in England during WW2 and then followed them home to the U.S. Some marriages worked, others didn't -- This book gives us a peek into the thoughts and feelings that made the difference. Also, it is eye-opening to see American culture from another's point of view. I didn't realize that England and America were so different. Heart-warming and engaging.

[mhanover10 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I received this as a Goodreads giveaway so mine didn't have the photos that some people have talked about. I would love to see photos of these brave women who took a chance on the love they found with the U.S. GI's who they barely knew. When the U.S. soldiers were sent to England, England had already been in the war for two years and many of their young men were gone fighting. This left a lot of women to pick up the slack back home and left them time with the GI's who gave them gifts of goodies they hadn't seen in quite some time. A lot of these women went back to America to a life they never imagined. Some good but a lot not so good. This book is written by a granddaughter of one of the women featured. I am fascinated with everything to do with WWII and this is yet another side I didn't really know much about. I knew a lot of British women married and moved to America but I didn't know much about their lives. This book is so beautifully written and makes you fall in love with these women. Some of them I was saddened to see what their husbands became and others I was so happy they ended up with a good guy. I recommend this book if you want to know a little bit about what happened during WWII. I wanted to read the book instead of work. It was hard to go back to work after my lunch hour was over.

[marshapetry · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Oh my, what a book. What started out as a fascinating look into the lives of young girls (and their heartthrob uniformed soldier boys) in the war turned into a soap-opera-like slog of domestic abuse and end up an essay in "why I'm glad I didn't live back during World War II". OMG these poor women provide a glimpse of the dreary life of women who basically sacrificed their lives for abusive men and had no societal means of support and don't feel they could leave... "we're British, we lived through the Blitz, we can survive anything". They fell for each other with wartime quickness and turned into a line of marriages that were - miserable, often war-like, survival stories. And the poor men - they got no support for PTSD and, at that time, probably couldn't even have admitted to PTSD even if there was therapy for it. A exploration of the 20th century's binary sex roles, trapped in their roles, living out mostly miserable lives and sticking out anything. I do recommend this book - if nothing else, just for the different view it gives of the war from all the soldier's books. Rarely do we get to read books from the civilian, and in particular, women's views. It's just that was started out as war stories turned into such misery that it was just too much. And that's what I'd have to say about the whole book: too much detail. And the kicker was, at the end of the book, the final summaries sounded like they were talking about a different book... "generally happy"?... "love of her life"?... "surrounded by love and family"? Oh man, it's no wonder we are a messed up generation in part because our families came from this mess.Recommend only if you can remain calm with descriptions of domestic abuse.

[philae_02 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I absolutely loved reading about each of the GI Brides featured in this book. Barrett and Calvi are such amazing authors that I felt that I was immediately transported back into the 1940s and watching the love stories unfold. This is a book that I would definitely want to re-read this book! It would actually make for a really good television series.

[janarose1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This is the story of four English women who married GI soldiers during WWII. In a time when London was teeming with American soldiers, many girls found themselves swept off of their feet. When the war was over, they had to make the difficult choice to leave behind their homeland and join their husbands in America. This was a pretty interesting story. The woman showed true courage and determination to make their lives succeed. Although it was slow at times, I found the culture clash interesting. Overall, well worth picking up.

[michigantrumpet_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Four English girls meet GIs during WWII, only to come to the U.S. as War Brides. Alternating biographical sketches on each, one of whom is Author Nuala Calvi's grandmother. While Margaret, Sylvia, Rae and Lyn never crossed paths, they share a common sense of romantic adventure, crushing homesickness, and bravery and determination in the face of adversity. says one, "I'll be all right. After all, I lived through the Blitz. We're British. We can stand anything." Note: The publisher never got us the copies through the LT ER program,but I was able to find a sale copy through B&N Nook.

[doingdewey · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

From the very beginning of the book, I felt that the third person narrative imposed a distance between me and the women in the stories. This got better as I went and got more engaged in the stories. In particular, the pictures in the middle and the conclusion both made me feel more connected to the women because they really brought home the fact that these were true stories.  There were also some very moving scenes throughout as all the women overcame incredible odds. Their stories would be fantastic fiction but are as true stories, they're also awe inspiring. I loved learning about this fascinating little piece of history that I'd never heard of before.

Given the subject matter and the time period, it was inevitable this book would focus largely on the four women's relationships with their husbands and other suitors. At times, this made it a little difficult to remember who was who, but the authors did a very good job reorienting the reader as they switched between stories. Despite the focus on the women's relationships (both in the book and in that time period), they all managed to stand on their own and fight for what they wanted out of life. I think it's wonderful that the authors are telling the stories of these inspiring women, one of whom is author Nuala Calvi's grandmother. The fact that the author's did many interviews and a lot of research is clear from the richness of these stories. If you love learning about women in history or WWII or if you like stories about complicated romance, this is definitely a book for you.This review was originally posted on Doing Dewey.

[etxgardener · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I got this book as a 99-cent Kindle special, and this book was definitely worth more than its purchase price. It's the story of four British women who married American GI's and came to the States as war brides. This is no fairy tale story of love blooming ass the bombs fall & then a happy ever afterwards in the golden land of America. Instead we see how very young girls fell for the romance of not only American GI's, but also the myth of America and how brutal the reality was for many of them.All four of the women portrayed in this book struggle with their marriages after the war and only one has a marriage that ends up being truly happy. However, they all make their way in the world one way or another and you en up admiring their bravery and resourcefulness in making lives for themselves in a strange new land. Recommended.

[twink_2 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The subtitle of GI Brides by Duncan Barrett and Nuala Calvi is: The Wartime Girls Who Crossed the Atlantic for Love. Over one million American GI's 'invaded' England during the Second World War . And by the end of the war, over 70,000 women had married American servicemen and headed to the United States to start a new chapter in their lives. Barrett and Calvi's book documents the lives of four of these women - Sylvia, Gwendolyn, Rae and Margaret, from the early days of the war, to meeting their husbands and finally their experiences over the pond. The narrative rotates through each woman's story in alternating chapters. It's absolutely fascinating reading and I was hard pressed to put it down. The time period is explored and relived through each woman's memories. Historical references are made to actual events and attitudes of the time, but the focus of GI Brides is personal and intimate. Although falling in love with a dashing young military man and crossing the ocean to a new country had the feeling of a romantic fairy tale, what these women actually experienced was not. Now, this was not necessarily the case for all GI Brides. The authors do mention that they "needed stories that really stood out - where the women had faced adversity and grown as a result." There are over forty pictures included in the book, that I found myself looking at almost every time I finished a chapter - gazing at a black and white photo of years gone by and contemplating the direction their lives took. I am captured by memoirs - even more so in this case. These women persevered and soldiered on - "We're British, we can stand anything. Those simple words brought great solace and support to a group of women building lives far from family and home." It was only while reading the authors' notes at the end of the book that I discovered that Nuala Calvi is the granddaughter of Margaret, lending a very personal note to the book. GI Brides reads almost like fiction - anyone enjoying this time period and a look at real lives lived would absolutely enjoy this book

[whitreidtan · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

When you think of the quick marriages that happen in wartime, you probably think of the marriages that took place before a soldier shipped out, marriages between people who already had a relationship and speeded it up to suit the short time frame they had. But in actual fact, there were many WWII marriages that were slightly different than this, if no less quick. Those very different wartime marriages were the ones between American soldiers and young British women they met when they were sent to England for training before heading to the European theater. Duncan Barrett and Nuala Calvi follow four of these GI brides into their marriages and their lives afterwards in their new book, GI Brides: The Wartime Girls Who Crossed the Atlantic for Love. Alternating chapters between Sylvia, Gwendolyn (Lyn), Rae, and Margaret, the book follows the four women more or less chronologically as they each join the war effort in their own way, as they meet and are courted by American soldiers, as they make the decision to marry, and then as they leave Britain after the war to follow their husbands to their new homes across an ocean. Each of the women marries for reasons as unique as she is, from falling in love to an accidental pregnancy. What they all have in common though, is how little they actually know the men whom they marry and the loneliness of moving thousands of miles from friends and family. Barrett and Calvi do a good job showing the road blocks the women faced from just getting permission to marry, to finding transport to America, to the suspicions they faced once in the US, to the hardships of adjusting to marriage with a relative stranger. And they contrast the idea of America as a land of prosperity and plenty with the hard and unhappy adjustment these very young women have to make when expectations hit a wall of not always pleasant reality. One of the brides endures abuse, one is viewed with suspicion and unkindness by her husband's family members, one discovers that her husband is an alcoholic, one contracts polio, one's husband is an unrepentant womanizer. What had looked like happier pairings in the days of war when everyone was grabbing at whatever happiness they could find turned into rocky marriages and generally difficult and lonely lives as expats for the four women. The women's stories are told in third person omniscient, an odd choice for a non-fiction work as it reads more like fiction. And although the stories are the result of interviews and oral histories, that narrative perspective causes the reader to wonder how much of it is straight truth and how much embellished. The narrative structure flipping from one woman to another each chapter does make it difficult to keep each woman's life separate and her experiences firmly within her story. Just as the brides blur together, so do the husbands. And although these are just four of the thousands of women who came over to this country as war brides, they are a sad cross-sampling given how most of their marriages turned out. Over all, the book is an interesting one and it showed another side of the results of WWII but it doesn't feel as representative of all GI Brides as it might have had there been a bit more variation.

[lauriebrown54 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

When America entered WW 2, many soldiers were sent to England as a staging ground for attacks on the continent. With many British men already fighting in Europe (or wounded or dead), the influx of relatively well paid young GIs found a country full of young women willing to date them. With the threat of battle immanent, both men and women grabbed at happiness and married without knowing each other well at all. When the war ended and the GIs were sent home, their young brides went with them- on separate ships, of course, and with a lot of indignities. What they found when the arrived on US shores wasn’t what they’d expected. Calvi’s grandmother was one of these GI brides, and she learned Margaret’s story not long before her grandmother’s death. This led to looking into the lives of other war brides. Four of them; Rae, Margaret, Sylvia and Gwendolyn (Lyn) have their stories shared with us here. One found herself married to an alcoholic who spent every penny he made (and then some) on alcohol, finally becoming abusive. Another married a compulsive gambler with PTSD. One’s family didn’t take to her at first at all and seemed to deliberately make her life miserable, and she contracted polio on top of that. Another’s husband was womanizer. They all had culture shock and found that even the English language wasn’t the same in the US as it was in England. The image of America that many had was of relative wealth, and it wasn’t always so. Not all the GI brides had horrible marriages; even after rocky starts, some remained happily married for a lifetime. But they all had to be incredibly strong to survive what they did. Some of them were only teenagers when they married and left their homes. I loved this book. Social history is fascinating to me, and I’m glad these stories are being told before that generation dies off. Each chapter is about a different one of the four, going in rounds. I confess that I sometimes had a little trouble with that format; I’d forget what the one I was reading had done in her last couple of chapters. I managed, though; it’s not hard to flip back and take a look.