Amherst Daily News (NS)
Cumberland County & Beyond, Thursday, November 10, 2005, p. B8
Remembrance Day Nov. 11th
War bride recalls career as dispatch rider
Andrew Wagstaff
More than six decades have passed since Pauline Hunter drove her motorcycle as a dispatch rider through war-torn England, but she still remembers the experience vividly and with great fondness.
"They were the best years of my life, even though there was constant bombardment," she recalled. "It was what I wanted to do."
From Wallasey in Cheshire, Hunter had tried hairdressing, library work and secretarial training before deciding to enlist in the military at the age of 17. Living in the seaside resort area along the Mersey River, she came from a family of merchant mariners, and wanted to do her part for the ongoing war effort.
It was 1942 and the German aerial attack on London remained strong. Telephones and telegraph messages were judged security risks, and the allied military communication system depended heavily on dispatch riders, men and women who delivered messages back and forth between commanding officers by motorcycle.
"It wasn't easy to get in," she recalled. "Those days in England, hardly anyone had a car because it was too expensive. My boyfriend was lucky enough to have one, and I was 15 when he taught me how to drive."
That experience would come in handy during her training as a dispatcher, as they were not tested on motorcycles but large automobiles, and would have to undergo thorough testing to prove their abilities. One part of the testing included driving the large vehicles through narrow iron gates.
But it was good training, according to Hunter, who was one of 10 riders assigned to H.M.S. Victory in Portsmouth. Their driving covered most of the south of England, west to Plymouth, east to Dover and north to South Wales. They worked night and day shifts regardless of the weather, 12 hours on and 24 off, although they were on call always. On some days they put in as many as 450 miles.
"These were roads we had never been on before," she recalled. "Back then you were born and brought up in a certain place, and didn't really travel anywhere else."
On one night she was travelling back from London in the pouring rain, and lost her way. After spotting a light in a window, she knocked on the door to ask for directions. Dressed in riding britches, leggings, helmet and jacket, she would have looked like a man to the fellow who gruffly answered from a window upstairs. When he learned she was actually a young woman he warmed up considerably and agreed to come down and offer directions, only to be reminded by a voice in the background, assumedly his wife, that he could "tell her from where he was".
Hunter recalled stories like those with laughter, and that you had to take a little humour with the horror to make it all worthwhile. But there were constant reminders of the dangerous situation she was in.
She recalled one particular occasion where German bombers had come up the Mersey from the North Sea and hit an air raid shelter with 42 people in it.
"These bombs were like landmines," said Hunter. "They would drop with parachutes, and when they hit they would explode outward. This air raid shelter was hit so hard that there were mattresses hanging from the wires. When the demolition crews came in, they found a baby's arm moving under the rubble, and that was the only survivor."
The dispatchers would have to be wary of the bombs but continue to do their work, she said.
"You just had to take your chances and go," said Hunter. "You had to keep it going."
The constant bombing took its toll on a person's senses, however, she said, remembering one occasion where she was cycling along and looked up into the sky. But instead of seeing a bright light she saw a brick wall, causing her to crash, shaking like a leaf.
A more serious crash would take place later, when she was carrying a dispatch to London from Admiral Stark of the U.S. Navy. It was early June 1944, and the allied forces were readying for the D-Day invasion.
Taking the main highway from Portsmouth to London, she came to hairpin bend at Liphook, which had a deep ravine at one end known as "The DR's Graveyard" because of the many dispatchers who had fallen to their deaths there. Coming from the other direction was a Canadian Army convoy led by another dispatch rider, and they hit head-on at about 55 miles per hour, he on his large Harley Davidson and she on her 350 Ariel.
Lucky enough to escape with only a bruised pelvic bone and a written-off motorcycle, she was hospitalized for 11 days at a Canadian hospital.
She was there when the injured soldiers started to come back from Normandy, many in horrific condition.
"What we saw when they brought them back from France was awful," she said. "I remember two men who were brought in without arms or legs, just torsos. But if you wanted to make yourself useful, you mingled with them, and tried to make them feel better."
Her connection with the Canadian soldiers had started prior to all of that, when she delivered a dispatch to a North Nova Scotia Highlanders unit camped below Portsmouth. There she met a young dispatcher who was the transport sergeant.
"He said, 'You drive that bike?'," she remembered, as her small cycle could not have looked liked much next to the Harleys being used by the Canadians. "But we talked and he found out where I was stationed, and that was how it began."
The Canadian dispatcher was Jerry Hunter of Amherst, and the two were married in England shortly after war's end in July of 1945. He went back to Canada not long after, and she followed him a year later, sailing from Liverpool on the Aquatania.
"It was exciting, and certainly the best thing that ever happened to me," she said. "England was bombed, and there was a lot of unemployment. It was a bad time after the war."
The couple made their home in Amherst, where he worked at the local Red and White store on Church Street, learning the tools of the trade such as cutting meat. After a few years they opened up their own family business, Jerry's Supermarket, on Elmwood Drive, which remains in business today.
The Hunters had two children, Keith and Anne, as well as six grandchildren and two great-grandchildren. Mr. Hunter passed away in 1993.
Now 80 years old, Mrs. Hunter continues to lead an active life, enjoying bridge and other card games with friends, and spending time with her family in Amherst and at the family cottage in Northport. This past summer she even took up kayaking with her grandson, Mike.
Looking back at the war years brings back many memories for her.
"It's hard top believe it was all 60 years ago," she said. "It all just seems like yesterday."
awagstaff@amherstdaily.com
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Andrew Wagstaff - Amherst Daily News
RIDER REMEMBERS - War bride Pauline Hunter of Amherst recalls her days working as a dispatch rider in Portsmouth, England during the Second World War. It was there that the young English girl met and married Amherst's Jerry Hunter, of the North Nova Scotia Highlanders.
