大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People鈥檚 War site by Anna Madar from The Folkestone School for Girls and has been added to the website on behalf of Joyce Browne with her permission and she fully understands the site鈥檚 terms and conditions.

My war runaway marriage.

Joyce Browne Nee Peecock

I belonged to a tennis club at the beginning of the war, and when war was declared several of the men were called to army. The girls decided that to write to them, we each picked a name out of the hat. We started to write to them, this went on for a year. I ran away from home and joined the ATS (The women鈥檚 army). The uniform of the ATS was khaki drill and one uniform we bleached white with Milton.
I was posted to the Middle East and there, awaiting for me were about 100 letters, amongst them was one letter from Eric, the man whose name I picked out of the hat. I wrote to him, he was also in the Middle East. Two days later I had a reply back saying 鈥淚 will meet you at the Barrack gates on Sunday at 9 am, if you are not there I will come every hour.鈥� As I was working until 1 pm I couldn鈥檛 meet him before but arrived at 1pm, and from then on we met frequently. Within six months we became engaged and did our courting around the pyramids on camels. A little later we were married in Cairo Cathedral, and we spent our honeymoon in Alexandria.

I worked in GHQ (Command Sectariate) as a secretary.

Six months later my husband was posted back to the UK after serving four and a half years overseas, and I also returned to England six months later.

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