My Grandparents' Wedding Photograph

Today we share a story from Hannah Mary who tells us of her granmother’s dramatic escape from continental Europe in 1939. Hannah says:

This photograph is of my grandparents, Olga and Leonard Chamberlain, on their wedding day ca. 1927. Olga came from Linz, Austria.

By the start of World War Two they were living in Sandhurst, on the banks of the River Severn, where he was the parish priest. Every summer she took her growing family back to Austria to visit her parents, and it was no different the summer of 1939. This particular year, at the age of 33, she went alone with her four sons (ranging from aged 2 – 10). They were due to return to England in early September, but war was declared and the borders were closed. The boat they should have been crossing the Channel in was torpedoed and everyone on board drowned. My grandfather had no way of contacting her family in Austria, to find out if they had been on board or not. Yet, the family story is that he heard a voice, telling him that he was not to worry, that his family were still alive.

Through a friend of hers, who had been at school with an official within the Nazi regime, permission was finally received for her and her children to be able to leave Austria. I imagine the fact that her husband was a clergyman and wouldn’t be fighting may have helped their case.

Still dressed in their summer clothes, although winter was drawing in now, they made their way by train across Europe, from Linz to Berlin, and then to Amsterdam, where they had to board a plane to Copenhagen. It was only at this stage that she was finally able to contact her husband to tell him that they would soon be flying back to London. But this was not the end of the ordeal. Shortly after taking off from Copenhagen their plane caught fire and immediately returned to the airport. It was snowing heavily and her 4-year-old son became temporarily separated from her. He still remembers hearing the frantic calls of his mother.

Eventually they were reunited with my grandfather in London and they all caught the train back to Gloucester.

Revisiting this story now, during lockdown, puts into perspective my own family’s struggles at this time. How grateful I am that we are all at home!