N.Z. WAR BRIDES

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXXII, Issue 21604, 5 January 1945, Page 4

N.Z. WAR BRIDES

ARRIVAL IN U.S.A. Under the heading “Sixty-Four N.Z. War Brides Reach Coast,” the Los Angeles Examiner recently gave prominence in the story to one girl, a widow, whose American husband had been killed on Saipan. The Examiner stated: Somewhere a band was playing. A dock worker glanced up from his work and gazed at a United States Armv transport as it edged close to the pier of a West Coast port. Ships’ whistles, pier horns, a babble of excited conversation raised a deafening din as (14 war brides —lovely New Zealand girls, and wives of American servicemen—made their way for the first time toward the native soil of their husbands’ homeland. There was one, tall, brunette', attractive Mrs. Cordell Turner, aged 22, whose husband. Captain Cordell Turner, of the United States Marine Corps, was killed while storming, the beaches of Saipan. If he had jived they would have been married just two years. There was a quiet, charming dignity about the person of this lovely Auckland, New Zealand, girl. “I’ve come to Cordell’s homeland to do what I know he would want me to," she said quite simply. “He was born and lived nearly all his life in a place called Twin Falls. Idaho. His mother and father are still there, and now I am going to join them —to do for my dead husband what he can never do for himself. I mean to pickup the loose ends of a life he cut short the day he left to join the Marine Corps.” The transport wasn’t without its laughter and youth. Among the 12 children of American servicemen coming to their daddies' country for the first time was 17 months’ old Caroline Smith, born in Wellington, the daughter of Chief Quartermaster Victor P. Smith, of the United States Coast Guard. With her was her mother, Mrs. Allison Barbara Smith, aged 22. With her was pretty Mrs. Howard Hiso, aged 25, also of Wellington, tile wife of a Marine Corps warrant officer now stationed at Camp Pendleton, near San Diego. Besides the G 4 war brides there were aboard 1200 battle-scarred veterans from the Pacific war theatre and the China-India-Burma campaigns, home on 30 days’ furlough.