MANY AUSTRALIAN BRIDES WON'T GO TO U.S.A.

Chronicle (Levin), 11 February 1947, Page 2

MANY AUSTRALIAN BRIDES WON'T GO TO U.S.A.

Several hundred Australian girls married to American servicemen have refused to join their husbands in the Uniced States, the War Department states, according to a Syaney Sun speciai from Washington. Many husbands have wriuten angry or appealing letters to the department under the impressicn that it can order wives' to come to America at once. "There's nothing we can do about it," said an official. "There's no way of leading a girl across the water aginst her will." The Army says it is doing its best to get willing war brides tc America. but it is adopting a stiictly hands-off attitude towards dieir plight — if any — when they get there. When women and their iependents are deposited on the -ailway station of the city or town which their former servicemen husbands designated, the Army sees its job as over. The War Department had a little fun getting mere than 63,000 wives over last year alone. Besides British and Australian girls, there were French, Swedes, Norwegians, Lithuanians, Letts. Italians, Moroccans, Indians and Irish, many of them' displaced persons. On debarkation many of the brides present a formidable ' language problem, and complaints of all sorfcs are frequent. The "Baltimore Sun" quotes a War Department officer as saying hat all the thanks the Army got for building a wooden crib with mosquito netting for one of the travelling babies, was a frantic accusation from the mother that a coffin with a white rhroud was being got ready. An Italian woman said ,ier baby was puruosely stuck with' needles, oiquiry disclosed that the child had been given a penicillin injection. If, after the trouble of getting to America, British or Australian brides want to go home, the consulates in New York and San Francisco ar.e prepared to offer somei help. % Mr. James Mclntyre, First Secretary of the Australian Embassy, said the number of Australian girls appealing to the Embassy to go home represented nothing more than U desultory - trickle and that the vast niajority of brides seemed content. 9 ■ i .