Stand By To Get Married

“STAND BY TO GET MARRIED NEXT WEEK — AM COMING ON LEAVE FORTHWITH.” So read the telegram that changed everything. In 1941, Rex, a young British Commando officer, fell in love with Margaret, an American heiress serving as a Voluntary Aid Detachment nurse. Their whirlwind courtship led to a hasty wartime wedding — just days before Rex was posted overseas. What followed was four years of separation, their only contact through letters. From India and Burma, Rex wrote of jungle marches, commando training, illness, humour, and near brushes with death. From bomb-ravaged Kent, Margaret described rationing, evacuation, the birth of their son, and the quiet struggles of loneliness and resilience. Their correspondence veers from ardent devotion to fierce arguments, from high comedy to aching despair — yet always returns to love. Set against the backdrop of world events — bombings in England, monsoons in Burma, whispers of peace, and the final shock of Japan’s surrender on their fourth wedding anniversary — Stand By to Get Married is both an intimate portrait of two extraordinary individuals and a vivid social history of life on the home front and in the field. Anne Holland, their daughter, draws on a treasure trove of their letters, diaries, journals, and photographs to tell this poignant true story. Moving, graphic, and often surprisingly funny, it illuminates not only a marriage tested by war, but also the class divisions, social mores, and hopes and fears of a generation. At once a gripping love story and a mirror of wartime life, this book will captivate general readers and historians alike, in Britain, America, and beyond.

Anne Holland is the author of more than 25 books, both historical and on horse-racing. She grew up in Tunbridge Wells and attended Battle Abbey School, site of the Battle of Hastings, 1066, instilling her love of history. She was also a successful amateur rider, hence her passion for racing. And this work has enlightened her immensely about life as it was lived in World War 2.