New Zealand War Brides

New Zealand servicemen and their war brides shown shortly after their arrival on the Rangitata, photographed at the Christchurch railway station

22 Oct. 1946

Private C.W. Smith is shown with his wife from Crete, Mr P.R. Blunden with his Greek wife

Source: Christchurch star-sun, 23 Oct. 1946, p. 5

File Reference: CCL-KPCD-07-031

From the collection of Christchurch City Libraries

Collated for Heritage Week 2010

Last night, I managed to catch the last bit of a story on the news about New Zealand war brides. The story had an elderly couple sitting together, holding hands and telling of their experience as a war bride during World War II. The story ends with the man looking lovingly at his wife and saying, "My mother didn't want me to marry an Englishwoman, she wanted me to come home and marry a kiwi girl. We've been married 66 years now, and I would do it all over again." Then he kisses his wife on the cheek and smirks for the camera.

*Sigh* Don't we all want to be that couple...madly in love for 66 years.

The 2 minute glimpse I saw of the story sparked my curiosity. Apparently the story of war brides has been widespread over the various wars with thousands of women leaving with soldiers they met during their tour of duty.

Kind of like Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms, without all the tragedy.

In New Zealand between 1942 and 1948 4700 women and children made the long journey to New Zealand by boat. Did you know it took six weeks to travel from New Zealand to Perth, Australia....that's a lot of motion sickness. The Minister of Defence at that time was a man named Frederick Jones, and his job was to take care of all the arrangements for the brides to come to New Zealand, in turn the brides were nicknamed, "Mr Jones' Wives." I thought making the 13 hour flight to New Zealand was terrifying, I can't even fathom being on a boat for weeks on end. This story does however remind me of my own family. Both my parents and Mike's parents were married as a result of military deployments. It looks like we all share a piece of this story.