There was a wedding here at the church yesterday
You can still tell that
The confetti and rice are still on the ground
I watched it from across the street
From the window in my room at the nursing home
I often watch the weddings here
On a Saturday afternoon
And sometimes like today
I walk by on my way home
And pick up some rice and confetti
From the day before
And stand here and just think
Of my wartime wedding
So many years ago
 
He was a pilot you know
A very brave man
Fought battles high up in the sky
In his Spitfire airplane
To protect us all from our foes
We had known one another
For only a short time
When we decided to get married
You did things like that during the war you know
Because you never knew
What tomorrow would bring
 
I got married at a registry office
There was no time for a church wedding
Just a few of our friends that were not away fighting
And a family member or two
 
He looked so fine in his blue RAF uniform
And I saved up all my clothing coupons and made
A wedding dress made out of blue
To match him at my side
And the rest of my outfit had been given to me
On loan from friends for the day
But even with little worldly goods
Nothing mattered except one another
 
He only had a weekend pass
That’s all that they said they could spare
They had so few pilots then
They just had to keep them all in the air
But he would come back to me
He promised me that and I believed him
Why would he not, he had always returned
Safely from every flight
 
So we got married that day
And the only night left to us
Was our wedding night
And after that he would have to go back
Back to war again
 
And the next morning as he kissed me and left
I felt like Cio Cio San in Madama Butterfly
But this time it was him
Who would fly high up in the sky
 
A few weeks went passed then a letter came
It was from The War Office
And before I opened it I knew that I would never see him again
Why else would they write
 
It said that he had been shot down over France
Fighting bravely for his country
But never to mind, I had his medal
And a small war pension too
 
What use was all that to me in the night when I was all alone
And I found out later from some of his friends
That they never really stood a chance
Against all the enemy fighters in the air that night
As they flew over France
 
And some months later I had a child
His son you know, from that one night we had
And as he got older he started to look
Just like his father
 
The years were hard
Bringing up a child with no father
But I was not alone
The War had left thousands of us
All doing the same thing
 
And as the war passed and peace came at last
Like many others I met a new man
He was good, he was honest, he worked very hard
And we got married and he looked after my son
As if he was his own
He was very special and I know I loved him
But just not like the first time around
He even took me to France once
To put flowers on a war grave
And sometimes he would catch me
Looking up at a bright blue sky
And he knew that I was not watching the clouds or the sun
I was watching my ghost pilot up high

Words Copyright © Tom King 2018

NOTE. "War Bride Memories" is an odd story because out of it I started to think about a "What if?" to this story where this bride never reached her wedding day but lived her life believing that her true love had been shot down before it and killed in the war only to find out very late in her life that fate had conspired to make them miss one another at important moments, each unaware of the other for some reason.  In the end in much later life they do get re-united, but that as they say is another story.