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Suzanne Kyrle-Pope

Discussion in 'Roll of Honor & Memories - All Other Conflicts' started by GRW, Feb 8, 2015.

  1. GRW

    GRW Pillboxologist WW2|ORG Editor

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    "Suzanne Kyrle-Pope, who has died aged 93, was a naval daughter and became a naval wife; in almost half a century of globe-trotting she was besieged and bombed in Malta, made maps for the Normandy landings, took part in an opium raid in Singapore, and introduced Father Christmas to Bahraini children.
    In a memoir, The Same Wife in Every Port (1998), she offered a unique record of life in a naval family at a time when Britain still had military bases around the world supporting the three Armed Services.
    She was born Angela Suzanne Layton at Wolverhampton on February 1 1921. Her father, the future Admiral Sir Geoffrey Layton, KCMG, KCB, DSO, was, she recalled, popular with his men, but in his family life he was a martinet: “intolerant, severely critical and unapproachable, inspiring nothing but fear and dread”. Because Suzanne was the last of three daughters and not the son he had hoped for, he had no interest in her at all, and their encounters were usually unpleasant. After a perfunctory education in England, in 1938 Suzanne joined her family in Malta, where her father had been posted two years earlier as second-in-command of the Mediterranean fleet, in the rank of vice-admiral.
    Malta at the time was teeming with British servicemen and there were parties every night. But the pleasures of an active social life were offset by her father’s hostility. “You’ll never get married, you know,” he told her; “you are too fat and ugly, and no one wants to marry a girl who can’t even play tennis.” In response Suzanne (who had inherited some of her father’s obstinacy) vowed to marry the first man who asked her — and she did, aged 19, in April 1940.
    Her husband was an Army officer called John Parlby; her father gave his consent while expressing regret that she was marrying a “Pongo” (naval slang for a soldier). But the marriage was a mistake from the start. She had never been told the facts of life and had no idea what to expect. Their short honeymoon, spent on the Maltese island of Gozo, was an “unrelieved, fumbling failure”.
    After the wedding, Suzanne’s mother returned to England, following her father who had been appointed to the Home Fleet. In June the Italian air force began the aerial bombardment of Malta, in which they were joined by the Luftwaffe from early 1941.
    As an Army wife, Suzanne remained in Malta throughout the siege (which lasted until August 1942), working in the cipher office of Military Intelligence. As the attacks intensified, she had a narrow escape when she managed to dive off her bike into a ditch just as a Messerschmitt flew down the road, strafing it with bullets. On another occasion the Valletta hotel in which she was living was bombed and collapsed, blocking the entrance to a natural cave underneath, where the residents had taken refuge, and filling it with choking dust. They were rescued three hours later."
    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/11395486/Suzanne-Kyrle-Pope-intrepid-traveller-obituary.html
     

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