Mum never forgot her first love, cut down on the battlefields of France

BRITAIN is full of unsung heroes and heroines who deserve recognition. Here, in our weekly obituary column, the moving and inspiring stories of ordinary people who lived extraordinary lives, and who died recently, are told by their loved ones.

THE Canadian province of Saskatchewan is known for its harsh winters, but that of 1947 is legendary.

After five weeks of near continuous blizzards, roofs were collapsing under the weight of the snow and roads and railways blocked by 18ft drifts.

It was an inhospitable, dangerous and terrifying environment — and no place for a pregnant young woman whose favourite pastime was cycling though the lush British countryside.

Yet this was exactly where my mother found herself, with no option but to adapt.

Life in Canada as a war bride had never been her plan. Born in Darlington, County Durham, Mum had left school at 14 to work in a shoe store for two shillings a week.

Her teenage sweetheart — and I believe the love of her life — was a young lad called Jack Peart, who belonged to her cycling club.

But everything changed in 1939 with the outbreak of war. In february 1942, Jack joined up and Mum was seconded to work as a welder — soon good enough to be promoted to welding inspector. (She later discovered that an amphibious tank she worked on was used on D-Day.)

On May 30, 1942 — just before he left for the front — Mum and Jack married. He never came home. He was just 22 and was killed in france in 1944 when his tank came under enemy fire from the air. My mother was the one who opened the telegram.

She met Bob, a tall, handsome and quietly spoken Canadian soldier — and the man who became her second husband and my father — at a dance in Darlington two years later. Perhaps

it was grief that brought them together. He’d just learned of the death of his sister, a mother of five. Mum had lost Jack and later told us that every boy she’d gone to school with was either dead or had returned from war injured, physically or mentally.

My father offered her an escape — and she seized it. They married in August 1945, then Dad was deployed back to Canada.

Mum was already pregnant by the time she followed in 1946, sailing from Liverpool to Halifax, Nova Scotia.

Her own mother was so devastated that she couldn’t go to the train station to wave her off. They never saw each other again.

Mum was naive. She knew her new home would be on a farm, some ten miles from civilisation, but she’d imagined that she’d be able to walk to the end of the lane to catch a bus into a modern city. There were no buses, no indoor plumbing, no electricity — and inlaws who spoke German!

She knew Bob had German ancestry, but this was a massive culture shock. And she soon discovered that life in Saskatchewan was not for the faint-hearted. The first winter was particularly bad and they were frequently trapped in for weeks at a time by snow. She had five children in the following years (I was the second youngest), but Mum never got used to the snow, and said she always feared being trapped with a sick child in need of help. As soon as we could afford it, in 1967, we moved to a town.

Mum was the most capable woman you could meet — she had to learn to cook, bake bread, sew and make absolutely everything from scratch. She would tell us about making sheets from flour sacks. She continued to knit, crochet and bake until her last days.

The hardship didn’t make her hard, though. She had great warmth and was a witty matriarch, wry and self-deprecating. Her opinions were as strong as her hands. Even at 94, she was a great conversationalist. It was a rare phone call that didn’t have you laughing. At her funeral one of her grandsons summed her up as a ‘warm, caring soul, yet a no-nonsense outgoing Englishwoman who would never hesitate to let you know you needed to smarten up . . .’

My mum and dad were married for 52 years before he passed away in 1997. He did his best to make her happy, but her heart was always back in England. Perhaps a little piece of it was always with Jack, too.

When she was in her 80s, I took her to his grave in France.

It was incredibly moving, watching this old lady at the grave of such a young man. Afterwards, she added some words to the photo album we made of the trip.

‘What if we could walk through the unnoticed door into a hidden garden, and find there the past ready to be lived again, willing to be shaped into harmony and order?’ she wrote.

‘If the hurtling train of life could pause at the station, the hands of the clock stop. If we could have another chance!!!’

Our mother’s life was split between countries and loves, so we divided her ashes accordingly. Some we placed in the grave with Dad in Saskatchewan. Some were scattered in the same cemetery as her parents and brothers in Darlington.

And some now lie in that field in Normandy with Jack. I think she’d be happy with that.

MarJory KolKe (nee Jowett), born september 16, 1921, died May 28, 2016, aged 94.