troopship romance
The mention of the troopship down the Atlantic is similar to that of my father Harold Pettinger. He was a 2nd lieutenant in the Yorks and Lancs regiment, aged 20, en route to Egypt. He was on a White Star line ship to Capetown, packed with troops, but also with some civilians. While wandering down the Atlantic for 6 weeks, my father got to know young girl called Dorothy fleeing London bombing to go to relatives in Rhodesia. They spent 3 days in Capetown before she caught her train to Bulowayo, and my father changed ships for Egypt, where he took part in the 1st Tobruk siege ( winning the MC) and later in Burma with the Chindits. Dorothy and my father corresponded right through the war, but after the war she married an RAF pilot, and stayed in Africa, while my father went back to London and his parents, marrying my mother a few years later.
The twist to this story is: my mother having died some 20 years ago, I took my father ( then 90) to a memorial service at Westminster Abbey. Seeing his medals, the taxi drivers would not take a fare from us, and I wrote to The Times to thank them. This letter was published and seen by Dorothy, now 89, still in Zimbabwe and widowed. A year later, repatriated to the UK, she managed to get in touch, and we discovered she now lived only 10 miles from my father, and they were reunited. It was as if they had never been separated, and they were as close as its possible to be until they both died in 2013 aged 91 and 93. There are a lot more incredible coincidences involved, and a google for 'Harold Pettinger and Dorothy Crombie' will give some more details, but there are far more extra stories about them than it is possible for me to write here.