大象传媒

'This story was submitted to the People's War site by Lesley Bennett of North Dorset Volunteer and Community Action on behalf of Barbara Chambers and has been added to the site with her permission. The author fully understands the site,s terms and conditions.'

After chasing Rommel back and forth across North Africa and coming to Italy my fiance was sent to the Trans Jordan frontier force. At this time I was in Ahwaz in Persia and we decided we would get married in June 1944 in the garrison church and I was determind it should be a traditional white wedding.

Everyone helped with flowers, confetti and food for the reception. The flowers were cut and kept cool by oil company wives, the confetti was made by military clerks in the offices using hole punches. The reception was in the sisters mess and the oil company wives provided the cakes and canopys.

The wedding had to take place at seven in the morning as later on the temperature was 138 in the shade.

My three bridesmaids and I hitched a lift in a three tonner to Basra to buy materials for the dresses from the bazaar. The dresses were made up by a lady dressmaker who was a Polish refugee in the nearby refugee camp.

The commanding officer of the hospital gave me away and we went to the church in his staff car escorted by six out riders.

After the reception we left for a hotel in Basra where we spent the night, the next day we took the overnight train to Bagdad. We spent three days there and then took the bus to Damaskas where we were met by a car which took us to Beirut where we had two weeks honeymoon.

We then went to Zerka in Trans Jordan where we spent the next three years.

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