Families bond over shared memories of war hero
A developing romance that ‘never got a chance’ in the past has drawn together two families now. Helen Harvey reports.
An Anzac Day story about a fledgling wartime romance has led a family to reunite with their ‘‘Aunty Peggy’’.
Peg Sando dated Major John Robert (Jock) McGruther before he was killed in action in Italy in July 1944, just a few weeks after his 29th birthday.
Sando, almost 98, told the Sunday Star -Times their connection was ‘‘a romance that was developing, but it never got a chance’’.
This week, members of the extended McGruther family got together with Sando to reminisce about the uncle they never got to meet. Many of them had been unaware of the romantic connection between Sando and McGruther until reading the story on Anzac Day.
Heather Cardon, nee McGruther, knew Sando as Aunty Peggy when she was young. Her mother Dede was good friends with Sando from when they were both in the New Zealand Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps (WAAC). But Cardon’s mother never told her Sando and McGruther had been close.
‘‘Probably because it was sad. I imagine they consoled each other over things like that and did not necessarily speak to the kiddies about it.
‘‘It was my mum who introduced her to Uncle Jock. She felt a lot about Aunty Peg otherwise she would not have introduced [Jock] to her friend.’’
Dede introduced Sando to McGruther in 1943 when they were all based at the Northern
Military District School of Instruction at Narrow Neck, on Auckland’s North Shore.
He had been invalided home after being injured fighting with the 18th Battalion 34th Anti-Tank Battery in Crete, and was an instructor at the camp. Sando, who was Peg Giles at the time, was in the dental section of the WAAC.
The last time they saw each other was on Christmas Day 1943, when they spent the day with McGruther’s family at Pirongia.
Her uncle was ‘‘definitely serious’’ about Sando, or he wouldn’t have taken her home to his family, Cardon said.
‘‘The loss of my uncle Jock, to be perfectly honest, affected the family terribly. It was shocking.’’
McGruther, of Nga¯ti Maniapoto and Nga¯ ti Hikairo descent, was the eldest in a family that included brother Colin and sister Jean Bell. Cardon’s father, Colin, was fighting in Italy when his brother was killed: ‘‘My dad never recovered from that.’’
When she tried to get him to visit the Assisi War Cemetery where McGruther was buried, he refused. ‘‘He said, ‘no I can’t do that. I buried my brother twice. I can’t do it again.’
‘‘He was only one mountain
‘‘It was such an amazingly terrible time for that generation, the amount of the loss . . . ’’ Heather Cardon
over, so he was there when Uncle Jock was put into his temporary grave and then the second temporary one.’’
Cardon’s mother died in 1972 and the family later lost touch with Sando. To be able to catch up and talk to someone who has memories of that time was wonderful, Cardon said.
‘‘My sadness is she’s one of the few left of that generation and still has memories of all of them. It was such an amazingly terrible time for that generation, the amount of the loss that went on.
‘‘My mum was engaged to somebody who died in Egypt and my dad’s fiance´ married someone else when he was away (at the war).’’
Cardon brought along photos of Sando and her husband taken at family celebrations.
It was also lovely to meet Sando’s daughter Karen Sandoy, she said. ‘‘We figured out we’d met when were 10 and 11.’’
Sando met her husband in 1952 after her second stint with the WAAC. She rejoined in 1950 when the army was recruiting for K Force – the New Zealand contingent that served in Korea – and ended up back in Auckland.
Karen Sando said she had always known about her mother’s connection with McGruther but her mother didn’t open up about it until she was much older, ‘‘probably out of respect for my Dad’’, Sando said.
Cardon said the nieces all knew about their Uncle Jock ‘‘and what a great fellow he was’’.
One of the nieces told Sando that on Christmas Day 1943, when Sando spent the day with the McGruther family, her older brother or cousin had been told to call Sando ‘‘Aunty Peggy’’.
That day was the last time Sando saw McGruther.
He didn’t have to go back to the war, she said.
‘‘He never mentioned to me that he wanted to go back. But when the war escalated in Italy he felt he should go.’’
That Boxing Day, Sando went on holiday with her family and a week later when she returned to Narrow Neck, McGruther had returned to the front.
She never got the chance to say goodbye.