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The air had been sucked from the room Even the captain looked shocked He had stepped back

‘Shall I take the had entered the room, Frances saw

Jean had subsided

The captain nodded ‘It would be best I’ll have soes havecal the shaking girl in her arreat disservice’ Her head whirled with the unfairness of it ‘She was a victim in this’

‘You’re a nurse, not a lawyer,’ hissed the wo head ‘I saw Or have you forgotten?’

It was too late As Frances led Jean out of the captain’s office, supported – or perhaps restrained – on the other side by the rating, she could just hear, over the noise of Jean’s sobbing, the wo, her voice querulous, self-justifying ‘I was told before we set out Warned, I should say Those Aussie girls are all the same’

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If you receive the personal kit of a relative or friend in the Forces, it does notThousands ofoverseas, packed up s and asked for them to be sent home The official advice to you is: ‘Delivery of parcels is no cause for worry unless inforram to next of kin from official sources’

Daily Mail, Monday, 12 June 1944

Twenty-three days

Jean was taken off the ship during a brief, unscheduled stop at Cochin No one else was allowed to disembark, but several brides watched as she cli to look at them, was motored towards the shore, an officer of the Red Cross beside her, her bag and trunk balanced at the other end She didn’t wave

Frances, who had held her that first evening through tears and hysteria, then sat with her as herdarker, had tried and failed to think of a way to right the situation Margaret had gone as far as asking to see the captain He had been very nice, she said afterwards, but if the husband didn’t want her any more, there wasn’t a lot he could do He hadn’t actually said, ‘Orders are orders,’ but that hat he hadthat bloody WSO’s neck, she said

‘We could write to her husband,’ said Frances But there was an awful lot to explain, not all of which they could do with any degree of accuracy And how , the tomen had composed a letter they felt was both truthful and diplomatic They would send it at the next postal stop Both knew, although neither said, that it was unlikely to make any difference They could just, if they shielded their eyes from the sun, make out the boat as it ca under what looked like an umbrella, one of whom took Jean’s cases, the other of whom helped her on to dry land It was impossible, at this distance, to see any more than that

‘It wasn’t my fault,’ said Avice, when the silence became oppressive ‘You don’t need to look at aret wiped her eyes and made her way heavily inside ‘It’s just bloody sad,’ she said

Frances said nothing

She had not been a beautiful girl, or even a particularly pleasant one But Captain Highfield found that in the days that followed he could not get Jean Castleforth’s face out of hiswith a POW, the putting ashore, the handing over into safe custody The look of ination on her face

Several ti The brides had been so adae haunted hireat disservice’ But what else could he have done? The WSO had been certain of what she’d seen He had to trust his company – the same company he had warned that he would tolerate no such misbehaviour And, as the officer had said, if the husband no longer wanted her, what business was it of theirs?

And yet those two faces – the tall thin girl with her veherief on the face of the little one –of these women, to travel so far on a promise based on so little To put them in the face of such temptation That was if it had been teirl – the second to be taken off in such circumstances – had cast a pall over the ship He could tell the brides felt lances at hi the decks on his rounds, huddled into doorways as if fearful he n them to the same fate The chaplain had attempted to address the wo devotions but that had only added to their heightened anxiety The wo heard of Jean’s treatment, had chosen to express their contempt in various ways, some more vocal than others, and now several of the woo he would have told theether Now he felt bleak sympathy This was not reat adventure They were essentially powerless And such powerlessness could invoke unusual emotions both in those who experienced it and the onlookers