´óÏó´«Ã½

First Irish GI Bride in the USA
By Maureen & Bob Mathes

I was living in Derry and I worked down in the shipyard you see for an American company that built the bases way before America came into the war. So America was coming into the war whether Japan had attacked it or not because all the uniforms were already in storage. At the top of Great James Street in Derry there were big warehouses there and my boss took me in one day and showed me all these American uniforms way before Pearl Harbour.

He used to say to me ‘I have a young fella in my outfit who would really like to meet you.’ And that’s how we ended up getting together — his boss Frank was a very good friend and he introduced us and from then on the rest is history.

I was 15 but he thought I was 16 and I didn’t tell him I had forged my age either to get the job at the docks. Bob was 19 — there’s four years between us you see. We started going togther then but he didn’t meet my parents for a little while and then one day My Mother said — it’s about time you brought that young man home. But we weren’t suppose to get married till after the war that was the arrangement but we went together for two years and then when the base was breaking up and the Americans were moved out later in the war Bob said ‘maybe if Ive got the permission your Mum and Dad would allow us to marry before I leave because it would be a lot easier for me to get you out to The States if we were already married. I said ‘Oh they’ll never allow it’ But he went ahead and put the papers in because he had to get the all clear from his commanding officers.

One day I came home from the office and My mother had a funny look on her face — she said I had a visitor today — a police officer came by to make enquiries apparently someone has put in for permission to get married. I was being checked out you see and of course he was being checked too. I said ‘Oh Mum we didn’t say anything because we figured it would never go through you know’ She said ‘ You’ll have to discuss this with your father’ Of course we ended up getting permission — they made sure he wasn’t already married in the USA because a lot of the girls were marrying guys and of course they were already married.

We ended up getting married in June and we had quite a big wedding for a wartime one. My mothers aunt from Belfast said she was going to make sure it was a white wedding — she bought the material and everything — which was very hard to get in those days. We ended up having a lovely wedding in St Columbs Cathedral and our reception afterwards at Fosters in Waterloo Place.

This was June 22nd and the base was breaking up but Bob didn’t know exactly when he would be shipped out- we figured it would be August sometime he’d be sent back to the States. We ended up getting word that a ship was ready to take all the brides and children to the USA one day before it sailed. As it happened the ship was to carry men as well and we were so lucky because Bob was sent on the very same ship as me. The men knew in advance when they were leaving but for us women we didn’t know till the day before and it was difficult to get everything ready and get passports too and of course it was sad to say goodbye. That was how we sailed off to the USA.

I was going with my beloved so the possible dangers of the Atlantic and uboats and all that didn’t enter my head. I think it made it easier for my parents that we travelled across together. It was very hard for them to let me go as you can imagine.
On the journey over I was very sea sick to begin with. I was in a cabin with 3 other girls who were very nice though i didn’t know them before I GOT ON THE SHIP. They were having a problem as well with sea sickness- it was not a luxurious Canard liner but we were very lucky to see each other every day and spent much of the day together, Bob and I.

The food was typical American food when I was able to eat some of it but a lot was food we’d never seen before like olives. I remember trying them but they didn’t go down too well. We were also fortunate to have a nice cabin but we were segregated women on one part of the ship and men on the other. All day we were together though — you could go up on deck, there were no deck chairs you just sat on the deck and watch the sea but out in the Atlantic it can get pretty rough.

Luckily this convoy we were part of going across the ocean was never touched — we did see the tracers going over head at one point but we don’t know if it was a uboat maybe a big fish — who knows!

It was a fourteen day journey and when we arrived in New York — they came and asked me if I would be the first one off the ship. I was gullible enough to go and was met with, you know what those American reporters are like , there were a lot of them there with flashing cameras and firing questions and I was this young bride — they wanted to know how we met and of course where we were going and I told them we were going to Southbend Indiana where Bob’s mother was living — without realising that they were going to wire on ahead to Southbend. Then the search was on for information about ‘Robert Mathes’ who’d married this Irish girl.

Well, because Bob’s mother had only lived there a short time there was no record of a Robert Mathes so that made the headlines too. Eventually, they tracked down Bob’s mother and we stayed on in NYC for a little honeymoon and sightseeing. We hadn’t had a honey moon in Northern Ireland — we were supposed to go to Bangor but because of the invasion on the 6th June — all leave was cancelled. We left New York by train and travelled to see Bob’s mother in Indiana after that and of course the press were waiting for us again. It was 6 or 7 in the morning when we got in and the reporters were there waiting for us and we went through the same rigmarole all over again and then we even ended up being on the radio in Southbend. And would you believe a lot of people of Irish descent in the area got in touch what with all the press coverage and all and they were wonderful to us they took us around visiting.

Then we went to St Louis to visit Bob’s Aunt Lucy. Her daughter was married to a reporter on the St Louis Dispatch newspaper so they were waiting for us as well and we had to do more pictures and more articles were written.

The plan was Id stay with Bob’s mother — he had his orders to return to base in new York and we half expected him to be sent to the Pacific as so many returning from Europe had been. After all the war wasn’t over yet. I stayed with bob’s mother for a month and then he called me to say he’d been posted to a base in Brooklyn which he knew I wouldn’t like. I said ‘ Bob as long as we can be together I don’t care. So we got a little appartment in Brooklyn. I was expecting our first baby at this stage and after a while we moved into Navy housing where at least you were with other young women in the same position as yourself.
Finally we bought a place on Long Island and lived there until our retirement. We have had a wonderful life together and I wouldn’t change one thing about it — I’d do it all again tomorrow.

© Copyright of content contributed to this Archive rests with the author. Find out how you can use this.