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The War Brides Return

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11/11/2011

BBC Radio 4 Extra - The War Brides Return

Testimony from the women who sailed across the Atlantic to join their servicemen husbands.

4 Extra Debut. Women who crossed the Atlantic to join their servicemen husbands during the 1940s tell their stories. From November 2011.

In the 1940s, over 70 thousand women, and 22 thousand children sailed across the Atlantic in more than 60 ships, on a one way passage, to begin a new life with their American and Canadian husbands they had met and married during the war. This War Bride exodus - is one of the greatest and unheralded mass movements in recent history. In April 2011, the Queen Mary 2nd brought some of them home.

Recorded as a montage programme on board the ship as it travelled from New York back to Britain, these women who are now in their 80s and 90s, tell extraordinary tales of that one way passage. Tales of falling in love, hasty marriages and arriving in a foreign land thousands of miles from home. For most of them it worked out - for some it didn't. But today there are over a million descendants in America and Canada, of these remarkable women who followed their hearts and took a leap of faith all those years ago.

Producer: Angela Hind
A Pier Production for BBC Radio 4.

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