In front of the war...

When I was a child, I used to seat near the fireplace with my grandfather. He often told me tales of his youth. I remember one time in a cold winter; I was falling sleep in the sofa when he started to tell me another tale…

Once upon a time when I was twenty and I was living in London, I had known a rich family which had a gorgeous daughter. Her name was Eloise. She was the prettiest girl a man can see. Eloise wanted to be a doctor and help the injured soldiers in the Second World War. She had a very strong vocation, but this for her father wasn't important, he wanted her daughter to marry a rich business man from New York and to be the housewife. Eloise was disheartened; she wanted to decide about her own life. She wanted to be a doctor and help in the hospitals in Poland where was taking place the Second World War. I didn't know that I was going to meet her one day.

One day I was walking with a pile of papers near King’s Cross Station when suddenly I crashed with someone, I started to collect the papers which had fallen and I watched to the stranger, she was a really beautiful girl. Then I said:

-          What’s your name?

-          Eloise, Eloise Clowes, and you sir...?

-          Rowley, Mark Rowley.

-          OK Mark Rowley, will you return me the handkerchief that you took with your papers?

-          Oh, I’m sorry, here you are. – I took not wanting to her handkerchief and when I noticed, well she told me that, I blushed and she smiled. I had fallen in love.

I thought that we weren't ever going to meet again, so I tried to forget this meeting. The days passed and I was called to the army for going to Poland and help the war-injured soldiers. At that time I was working at the St Ann’s hospital, I was the principal pediatrician although I was only 25 years old. I was leaving to Poland in a half year.

Six months later I was in the boat on the way to France for later going to Poland by train. In the boat I was in a cabin with an Irish man and the cabin next ours was occupied by two women judging the voice. I decided to go there and introduce myself; my surprise was that one of the women was Eloise Clowes, the girl in the train station. She was also surprised and I didn’t remember that girl so beautiful.

-          Mark it’s you! – She started

-          Yes I am. It’s good you remember me, Miss Clowes. – I said shy.

-          Please call me Eloise, and what are you doing here? Are you travelling?

-          No, I am not, Eloise – I blushed. – I’m going to France to catch a train to Poland; I’ll be working in a hospital because of the war.

-          I am going to Poland too; I have run away from my family, I did not want to marry Paul Duval, the business man… I wanted to be a nurse or a doctor in the war hospital, so I enlisted myself here.

The days passed, Eloise and I traveled to Poland together. We were posted in the same Hospital, so our relation grew up easily. We fell in love in the war, in the middle of a disaster bore a little hope. Those days in Poland were so hard, but when the war finished, we decided to get married and form a family, we moved to a little village in Italy and there started all again.

…And here you have the love story of your grandparents…

Meri.

This post is inspired by Pearl Harbor, I loved that story and the film as well.