B.A.O.R. WIVES
almost all of it has deplored the policy of bringing wives to Germany. Spectator and other journals, often over distinguished signatures, and SIR.—A certain amount of correspondence has been published in The :11 you permit me a little space to present another aspect, which has apparently been overlooked by your correspondents? To take my own Case, I was married in December, 1936, and in September, 1939, my husband went to war. I saw little of him until he sailed for India in March, 1940, and thereafter nothing at all until he returned in April, 1945. After only a few months he was posted to B.A.O.R. where I joined him last month. The point is, is the convenience of Germans to be considered more important than that of soldiers who have fought the King's enemies for six years, and of their wives, many of whom, like myself, worked voluntarily in factories under conditions of acute dis- comfort and who have been united with their husbands for only three or four years out of ten or more? And there are cases harder than mine.
One is forced to the conclusion that these smug gentlemen have never *known the agony of separation or the anxieties which women feel whose husbands are in action in Burma and other theatres or they would not so airily deprecate " Operation Union " on the grounds that it brings addi- tional hardship to Germans. In any case, such a small number of families are coming that not a great deal of difference will be made. One is tempted to wonder how many Germans would•have written to German papers protesting against German wives joining their husbands in the German Army of Occupation in Britain had things gone otherwise. That they did not is due, in some measure, it will be admitted, to people like my husband.
Since my husband is an officer I must, for obvious reasons, withhold
my name, but I am, Sir, yours faithfully, B.A.O.R. WIFE. P.S.—I should like also to take this opportunity of placing on record my appreciation of the admirable arrangements made for our journey.
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