LONELINESS THE CAUSE

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 9, Issue 91, 26 June 1946, Page 3

LONELINESS THE CAUSE

SOLDIERS’ WIVES

ONE IN FIVE PROVED UNFAITHFUL

According to "a “census” taken by Army chaplains in Italy, one soldier’s wife in every five proved unfaithful after three years of separation.

This conclusion was based on information gathered by more than 20 chaplains from among 8,000 troops. The investigation was prompted by increasing applications for compassionate leave because of matrimonial troubles.

One of the investigators was die Rev. N. R. M. Hawthorn, rector of Carboldisam, Norfolk, who served for nearly four years in Egypt and Italy. He said that statistics which reached him in 1944 from an official source showed that in 3,000 “faithless wife” cases 74.5 per cent, of the men concerned were British civilians.

The figure for men' of Allied and Dominon Forces involved was only 4,5 per cent.

Mr Hawthorn said: “The census we conducted was on a limited scale, and the figures for different units varied considerably.

“ In general, the proportion of troops who had been informed of the infidelity of their wives ranged roughly from six to ten per cent. There were many eases of suspected infidelity.

“It became very obvious that , the main cause of the crashing of most marriages was simply loneliness. Most of tlje erring wives, we' found, were not young “war brides,” but women who had been married for five to ten years.

“Separation from their husbands proved too long for them. Absence did anything but make their hearts grow fonder—of their husbands. “The pathetic truth is that so many men in the Forces were utterly incapable of writing letters which might possibly maintain emotional contact with their wives.

“A letter that merely says: ‘I hopes you are well, as this leaves me at present,’ is hardly likely' to warm any absent woman’s heart. “Many soldiers with trouble at home showed me the letters they got from their wives. One man who had been on active service for more than three years received a letter which ran: ‘Unless you get yourself home soon I am going off. I can’t stand being alone any longer. I’m fed up with it.’ ”