GI Brides: The Wartime Girls Who Crossed the Atlantic for Love

My father was a part of the D Day invasion of France. His platoon was shipped to England and he spent several years in France so I was intrigued with the narrative.

I just love WWII history! There is such an amalgamation of beauty and romance, horror and desolation that I seem to be transfixed with these stories no matter what angle they take. In GI Brides we get another interesting angle (and one I haven't read yet): that of the English women who fell in love with the American men that flooded their shores and that left behind everything to follow these men to a country they knew so little about. What makes this story that much better is the fact that it's all true!GI Brides shares the experiences of four English women during the war and after as they moved to America with their G.I.s. Each chapter concentrates on one woman's story and the chapters alternate between women. I was impressed with how well the stories flowed together, showing the similarities within each storyline as well as how each woman's situation was unique, and it really read more like a novel than what I've experienced with more bland, facts-driven nonfiction (which is a good thing!). What I enjoyed most of all was the fact that the stories weren't sugar-coated to give "happily ever after" situations. These women sacrificed a huge amount, leaving behind everything they had to follow these men they really didn't know very well. None of the men were exactly who they said they were and these women had to face the realities of men suffering with alcoholism, gambling addiction, overbearing families and even infidelity. What I was left with was a remarkable appreciation for what these women endured and how they never gave up on working for the life they wanted for themselves and their children (if they had any), whether that was with these G.I.s or not. These women were survivors. My biggest complaint with G.I. Brides isn't really the story but the narrator of the audiobook (I switched back and forth between the Kindle version and the Audible version). While she did a good job of guiding the story along with her inflections and pacing she didn't really distinguish much between the various characters' voices. While I know it would be incredibly difficult to differentiate between this many people I have heard it done before and, for the most part, the women all sounded the same and the men all sounded the same. I will also say that there are some delightful pictures of the women and their families, which I very much enjoyed, but they were lumped all together at the end of the eBook. I would have preferred them disbursed throughout when the actual people were being discussed so I could visualize them while reading, not after I was finished. I think G.I Brides does a wonderful job of giving a well rounded look at what these English women gained and lost by following their hearts to America. It isn't overly romanticized or exaggerated, it is real life with all its ups and downs. I would probably recommend the print version if you are like me and love having pictures throughout showing the people being discussed (I assume the print version does this), but if this isn't an issue for you I would highly recommend getting the story whichever way you can. I look forward to reading more about G.I. brides and that's because of what I learned here.

I liked this book a lot, but wish I'd simply read each bride's chapters in sequence rather than jumping back and forth among them as presented. It would have been easy to do that because the chapters are titled with the women's names. It was tiring just keeping straight which one was which, but maybe that says more about my short term memory than about the book. In any case, I didn't see where this jagged structure made any sense since these women did not eventually come to know each other or have all that much in common other than their decision to marry a foreigner and leave their homeland. I was drawn to the book in part because my mother was German and my parents met in Germany during the Occupation. If you added to the various complications that the women in this book encountered the further difficulty of my mother's partial mastery of English from her schooldays (by then 8 years earlier), you can imagine that the kinds of untoward surprises experienced by the war brides in this book rang very true for me. I thought the author wrote quite perceptively and engagingly about these people, really bringing their stories to life. War causes so much emotional damage to the people who experience it. It's obvious that most of the husbands in this book likely would not have had better relationships if they'd married hometown girls, but the difficulty for the young women living so far from their own families was especially sad.

I really loved this book. While the stories of the four brides featured in its pages could easily have dissolved into soap opera at times, the narrative was such that I really felt for these women put down in a strange place with men they didn't know very well. And, sadly, not all the marriages worked out, although in the end it seemed all had hammered out pretty decent lives for themselves. As someone old enough to have gone to school with the children of war brides, it also makes me wonder how they found my small Wisconsin home town.While being caught up in the lives of these women, it was also an eye-opener for me in terms of life in the U.S. in the early post-war years. It provided a different look at family life and the role of women within it as people sought to return to the "normal" they had known before World War II. As a baby boomer, I missed a great deal of that. I found the one bride's battle with polio particularly gripping, even as it gave me an education on what being struck by this disease that has now all-but-disappeared meant.To learn at the end that the co-author is the granddaughter of one of the brides chronicled (I won't say which one) was icing on the cake. What an amazing thing to learn about your own grandmother. Not only is it a story well-told, but in the end it's a story told with love, as well. This is a book that mixes a little history and a little romance, and it's a great book to talk about with girl friends, regardless of their ages.

I really enjoyed this story of 4 women who married GIs & went to live in different parts of the US. It was shocking how much their lives changed upon arrival as none were really prepared for what awaited them. With some good fortune & some bad, their lives moved on.The only reason I gave this 4 stars instead of 5 is that the story jumped about so much from 1 person to the next. I would have preferred 2 or 3 chapters about the same person as it was difficut rembering what was happening when it flitted about so much.

I found this very interesting, having been brought up just after WW11 my childhood was spent listening to stories about the war. All things related to either "before the war", "during the war" or "after the war". Male family members fought in the Airforce, Army and Navy, the women worked in munitions factories, one uncle was killed and another was taken prisoner at Dunkirk so that era is especially relevant to me as to most "Baby Boomers". The book opened my eyes; the GI Brides were just ordinary women, the tales I listened to were very different. Women who fraternised with the American troops were very definitely judged adversely, which they never really lived down. The reality appears to be very different indeed. So not only was I absorbed in the stories of awful hardship but I was also made aware of the truth. I love historical writings and have read many other Duncan Barrett books. I recommend this book.

Having had an aunt who was a GI bride I have always been interested in the lives of these young women who fell in love with the American servicemen stationed here in WW2. I often heard my mum say her sister had been 'one of the lucky ones' in that she had a happy marriage. This book covers the experiences of several war brides, I did find it annoying at first that it chops and changes between each character and found myself trying to remember who was who. But as I continued to read I began to know each bride and who she married etc. some were 'lucky ones', others were not so lucky. I used to think it must have been very romantic being whisked over to America and starting a new life, which is how these girls' stories began. On reading further it became apparent that for some their hopes were slashed as they settled to life with their new husbands. I particularly liked the epilogue as it told us what happened to each of the women instead of leaving me wondering how things turned out for them.

I must admit in the past I've always looked at the topic of GI Brides to be one of romantic notion, but boy this book really gets to the truth. It seems it wasn't all wine and roses for these girls who left their homes and loved ones to travel across the sea to be with their men. The way of life in the USA wasn't what they had immagined. It was hard slog fitting in with the families of the GI's and the way of life and communities around them. It wouldn't be fair to go into too much detail about the book and its stories from the different women, but if you want a real good read about true life for these girls then this is the book for you.

Authentic stories which felt as though taken either from interviews or diaries. Accounts of experiences in the blitz, travelling to work very clearly described brought back many memories of that time in our history. I was 9 years old when the war started and have always beenInterested in people and events. Would listen to adult conversation and hear of the disapproval of certain girls from the small town where I lived. One young lad would tell us about his sisters who entertained black Americans and going to be evicted. I have many memories of happenings in the town and the village in east Anglia.