A war bride's story

by Arlyene Barrett Corkum

The Advance



Elvin “Dick� Dexter, Brooklyn, Queens County, enlisted in the Navy during WWII. With the rank of petty Officer, he was assigned to mine sweepers throughout the war and during D-Day Landings in Normandy.

His wife, the former Hilda Parrott of Portobello, Scotland (a suburb of Edinburgh), joined the Auxiliary Territorial Services (ATS) with rank of Private. She was transferred to Nottingham, England, and become one of the 2,500 service personnel to work in a mail sorting station, for the next three years.

She was soon promoted to a select group of women chosen to memorize secret codes for mail delivered to troops stationed in the Middle East and North America and other theatres of war. Meanwhile, she continued sorting mail and parcels for service personnel. The coded area of her station was separate and sealed off from general mail.

“Every year, we signed a confidentiality agreement. Although we learned the various codes we never actually knew the locations,� she said.

“A few days before D-Day, officers came and told us to ‘tie up’ all the coded mail. They took these mail bags with them. We later learned this was to cheer up the trops.�

Hilda and her mates were not happy with being billeted in old Victoria houses that had been closed for ten years, and should have been demolished. There was no heat, no lights, and no running water. “When we did get a heater rigged up, the thing overheated and blew a hole through the side of our house. We thought a bomb had hit us,� she laughed.

Dick and Hilda met in an ice-cream parlor in Portobello. The dashing Canadian navy officer and the petite Scottish army private fell in love at first sight. They soon became engaged, but it would be two years before they would see each other again.

A few months following their marriage, Hilda discovered she was pregnant and had to take her discharge from the service. “We couldn’t stay in the service once we became pregnant,� she said.

During WWII, from 1942-1948, over 43,000 war brides and 20,000 children sailed for Canada from Briton, France, Belgium and The Netherlands.

Hilda left for Canada on the English troop ship Sycthia. There were 750 war brides and children and 2,000 troops aboard. “I was glad to get out when I did. If you were six months pregnant, the government wouldn’t allow you to leave,� she said.

“We sailed in convoy,� she remembered. “A monstrous American troop ship was in the lead with another one behind us. There were oil tankers alongside, destroyers on the horizon and those little navy ‘corvettes’ scattered all around.�

The ships were not long out of port when the captain detected a German submarine under our ship. The whole convoy was ordered to stop. We were told to put on our life jackets and carry our little red lights. There we sat all night ‘bobbing like cork’ on the water. Nothing happened and we resumed our course for South America the next day, where the oil tankers left us. Further along, the rest of the convoy broke up and we were left on our own she said.

“The crossing took two weeks, the weather was pretty good and we were comfortable,� she said.

When the ship reached Halifax, Hilda boarded a train for the South Shore. It was a very dark night when the train pulled into the Brooklyn station.

Following his discharge from the service, Dick became postmaster of the Brooklyn Post Office. Hilda (who swore she would never sort mail again) became his assistant. Before their retirement 30 years later, they would see the introduction of rural delivery and a brand new post office for their village.

A small woman with a fun sense of humor, Hilda became somber when asked about her thoughts on the war. “We were young back then,� she said. “We took the war in stride. There were fun times we wanted to remember. Of course, we were concerned about the Germans bombing us. But the war, as we knew it, didn’t hit home for us until people we knew were killed.�

This year marks the 60th anniversary of the War Bride, with celebrations held earlier this year, at Pier 21 in Halifax. Hilda is a founding member of the NS War Bride Association.

Besides her daughter, Heather, she had a grandchild and lives in the same house in Brooklyn the couple purchased in 1947.