From war chute to wedding gown
It was 1am on May 11, 1944 when 25-yearold Bruce Cunningham dropped from a burning bomber and landed on a Belgian cafe – his life saved by a white silk parachute.
His first concern was whether his Lancaster bomber had landed on someone’s house.
It was the only time he had used the French he learnt at school in Wairarapa, and was pleased to learn his plane had crashed in a nearby field.
But, while he was hauled off to a detention camp in the German city of Frankfurt for interrogation, his parachute remained to be eventually crafted into a wedding dress for the cafe owner’s daughter.
In 1996, Cunningham returned to the Belgian capital of Brussels and was reunited with the remnants of the parachute, which he keeps under his desk at the Rita Angus Retirement Village in Wellington.
Massey University war historian Glyn Harper said it was common to ‘‘make do and mend’’ during war rationing, which was imposed on clothes and fabrics from 1941 to 1949.
‘‘All clothing was rationed. Military got first priority,’’ he said. ‘‘High-quality fabrics, particularly silk, was as rare as hen’s teeth.’’
People typically got 48 coupons a year – more if you had children – and a wedding dress might have taken 20 to 30 coupons, Harper said.
Not even Queen Elizabeth II was exempt. ‘‘The Queen was married in November 1947 and had to save up for quite some time to get enough coupons.’’
The parachute is one of a plethora of things in 98-year-old Cunningham’s room that serve as reminders from his time in World War II. There is his logbook, photos of the Bomber Command Memorial and dozens of drawings of warplanes. Even the tea-towel is printed with Lancaster bombers.
After Frankfurt, Cunningham was sent to a Luftwaffe camp for Western Allied Air Force personnel in Zagan, Poland, where he bided time making a pilot’s cap out scraps of silk and old shorts.
It was a time of resourcefulness and pragmatism, as the diary with clippings from his time there reveals.
‘‘One bloke in our room, he was shot down and his mother sent him a note: ‘Wash behind your ears’,’’ Cunningham said.
More than 70 years on, he still has the cap and an identification tag, stamped with ‘‘SAGEN’’. These were known as ‘‘blood tags’’ – metal labels on strings that military personnel wore to list their name, service number and blood type.
‘‘If you were killed and you burnt to death, that wouldn’t burn.’’
Along with old shorts, Cunningham lined the cap with silk scraps from flying boots, and filled it with toilet paper and plastic bags. To get the badge on the front, he traded a piece of chocolate with a fellow prisoner.
He noted the even stitching, adding: ‘‘I’m not sure I could do that now.’’
More than 70 years later, all his keepsakes have held together well.
So has he. Cunningham still works as an accountant but he bemoaned: ‘‘All my clients are dying. I’ve only got 25 now. It used to be 150.’’
His desk is a mess of papers and wartime trinkets but among all that is a lamp that displays a poppy, and a dangling bag of marbles. ‘‘I think one of the most horrible things anyone can do is to indicate you’ve lost your marbles. I haven’t lost my marbles.’’
Having spent more than 60 years selling poppies in Courtenay Place each April 25, Cunningham will mark this Anzac Day with a service at the rest home village.