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MARGARET COOKE-HURLE (nee Watson)
ARMY WIFE

Margaret was brought up in Barnard Castle. Her father was a solicitor and she had three older brothers. She was educated at home; at Cheltenham Ladies College, in Paris and at Studley Agricultural College in Warwickshire.

I met my husband, Jack, at a Hunt Ball and we got married in 1935. He was a Major in India with the Cheshire Regiment. I went with him to Cairo and Haifa in Palestine. Our next station was Bombay, but I returned home in 1939 to have my first baby, Alison. When she was three months old, I left her with my mother, a nanny and a cook and went to join the Regiment in Khartoum on The Nile in Sudan. Khartoum was a British protectorate and considered an Indian Station. On the outbreak of War, we went to Atbara, where the regiment were guarding a bridge. It was the happiest place I had ever been and I loved the people. The intention was for Alison to be brought out, but war was declared in September and I didn’t see her again for 2 ½ years.

When the Regiment left Atbara I got on a Nile steamer to Cairo in Egypt on my own but then got a message saying to go to Ismailiya on the Suez Canal. We didn’t stay long there and then the Regiment was sent into the desert and I had to go back to Cairo. I then received a message saying I could go to the desert and went to Mersa Matrou, which is to the East of Alexandria towards Libya, where the regiment was stationed. Here I lived amicably with five wives in a wooden bungalow, which was the ‘hotel’. There was nothing except the camp and I spent my time laying in the sun and swimming in the sea. The food was terrible, mostly goat. Then General Wilson came and said ‘Get rid of the women’ so back by train to Alexandria where I stayed for a long time so I could see my husband when he came on leave. It was all very French. I stayed as a PG (paying guest) with the manager of the Cairo bank and his family and sailed on their yacht in the harbour. Daphne Du Maurier had stayed with the family previously. When Jack’s leave stopped I returned to Cairo where I lived in a boarding house and worked in the Regiment canteen, known as ‘Tipperary’. This was run by Lady Russel & Russel Parsher, Head of Egyptian police. One day the Northumberland Yeomanary arrived and into the canteen walked Jack Chatt from Marshall Street, the gardener from Lartington and a man from Startforth and I was so pleased to see people from home.

Leave stopped as the Italians were pushed back to Tunis. The troops’ wives and anyone with children all went to South Africa and had a wonderful time, but a friend and I decided we would try to get home. We got berths on The Orontees at Suez and were in a convoy with six other ships, including the ‘Empress of India’ and had to ‘zig-zag’ the whole time because of submarines. The first stop was Aden where the cook died, so we had to be buried at sea. The ship was blacked out and it was very hot in June. We stopped next in Mombassa which was lovely ~ very green. Then we were diverted to Madagascar to pick up German prisoners taken off a submarine. We stopped in Durban and had to leave the ship and find accommodation. People were asked to take them in and I was taken in by an ambassador. One day I was walking along the quayside and saw someone from the Durham Light Infantry and recognised the black buttons of the 6th Regiment which I knew my brother, William, commanded (as our father had in the First World War). I found he was staying there and they were able to spend 2 days together, along with local people from Bishop Auckland.

We continued to Cape Town where The Orontees, which was like a P & O liner, set off alone across The Atlantic to Trinidad. It couldn’t return up the West coast of Africa, as the Navy were chasing The Bismark German vessel. On the way they passed the remains of a sunken ship. I was still travelling with the same friend and also Lady O’Connor, wife of General O’Connor who was a Prisoner of War. We travelled up the coast to Halifax, then crossed the Atlantic once more, and had the horror of getting home up the coast of Greenland through thick fog. The captain wanted to ‘heave too’ (stay still) because of icebergs and there was talk of The Titanic! Her friend talked all night as she couldn’t sleep. ‘Joy of joy’ they saw the island of Eigg ~ it was a gorgeous summer day and they could smell the heather. They got off at Glasgow and caught the train back home. It was 1941 ~ Margaret had been away 2½ years and the trip back had taken 10 weeks. I was thrilled to see my daughter again.

Jack was now in Malta being ‘bombed to bits’. I lived with my parents at Spring Lodge and drove a mobile canteen. These contained tea, cigarettes, chocolates, biscuits, etc. and were driven once a week to groups of troops ~ one on the edge of Bowes Moor where they were guarding the gas and one at Streatlam. We had a knitting group at Spring Lodge, making socks for the Navy and I visited the five or six Land Army girls at the hostel at Langton, near Staindrop and started an evening meeting at the Montalbo Hotel with coffee and games. Lade Starmer had started one in Darlington and sometimes I took them through there. I tried to get into making armaments at Kirby Stephen and having been to agricultural college tried to join the Land Army, but ended up working for a year and a half distributing their uniforms in Durham. I lived mid-week with Cannon Maine and his family in the Cathedral yard and travelled back at week-ends by train. I left in 1944 when my second daughter, Susan, was born.

Jack had returned in 1943 after we had been separated for two years and we all went eventually to Plymouth, which was flat having been bombed. He was then sent to France and was wounded two weeks before the war ended.

Since then Margarget has lived in Startforth Hall bringing up their family, then she moved to Hall Farm. She has always had a great interest in the Church, the arts, history and travel.

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