Child of war to soldier’s bride

GROWING up during World War II, Townsville wasn’t always an easy place to be for a 12-year-old with food shortages, American troops and bomb blasts.

Legacy widow Margaret Pilcher (pictured with a photo from her wedding day) can still remember July 29, 1942, when a Japanese flying boat dropped seven bombs into the sea and an eighth that fell on an agricultural al research station at Oonoonba.

She was 10, and said she could feel and hear it from where she was living on Bowen Road.

“A plane flew over r and of course we weren’t far from where it went off in Oonoonba,” she said.

“I can definitely remember that, I was about 10 at the time.” ”

With a large number of Americans in town, Margaret’s sister married one before moving overseas to live with him.

But Margaret stayed in Townsville, where she met her future husband, Vincent, 12 years her senior, who eventually volunteered to fight in the war. He was in the 2nd Dock’s Company and had two trips, once to Darwin and one to Port Moresby, where he loaded ships before going to Rabaul to build airstrips.

He was medically discharged, suffering from malaria and mumps at the same time, before returning to work as a farmer.

With today marking the 75th anniversary of the end of the conflict, Margaret says she can remember Townsville residents partying in Flinders Street, but will pause to remember those lost.

“I’ll probably still be thinking of my husband, and there were different other fellows I knew who had passed away and some who hadn’t come,” she said. “Even though I was only young …

I can still remember them all around our place at Bowen Road.

“We had horses and (two of) my brothers were trainers, the other brother a jockey, so we always had somebody (who served in the war) there.”