Mother's Memories - Widowed 1941

  Harry Godfrey of 38 Squadron died 21 June 1941.  I remember that my mother said others in the plane had survived.
   If he wasn't the pilot, he might have been the rear gunner. They are the two people most vulnerable at the front and the back and who stay in the plane, if it is shot at and damaged, until after the others have jumped out.
   The survivors would have formed a new team. My mother was upset that she was avoided afterwards. She felt they were unsympathetic, unhelpful unkind, no longer interested.
   A woman I met a few years ago told me that avoiding the family or widow of a deceased airman would have been normal. Other crew members and their girlfriends or wives were not merely embarrassed because they could not think what to say.
   The feeling was stronger than that. They wanted to maintain morale.
    More importantly, they were superstitious. They did not want to be associated with somebody who died, which was bad luck.   Instead, they wanted to not think about it, just move on with a new group hoping for better luck.
    My father was my mother's second husband. After she died, I had to help him deal with all the paperwork, her birth certificate and marriage certificate to show her records and that my father was her next of kin.
     She was listed on her second marriage certificate to my father as a widow. I had previously thought she might have concealed her first marriage from him. But she was listed on the second marriage certificate as widow. I asked if he could remember anything she had said about her previous husband in WWII.
   My father was more concerned that he had just become a widower. He shrugged, "It was a long time ago."
   My first thought about her being described on the marriage certificate as a widow was how unkind. Why did they have to say that?
   A minister of religion pointed out that it was a legal requirement. You could not marry a woman a second time if she already married somebody else. She had to show that she was either divorced or widowed.
   The only picture I have is of the Alamein Memorial from the CWGC website.
He had a father called John and a sister.
   I am still haunted by the mystery. What did Harry Godfrey look like?
Angela Lansbury I am still hoping that somebody, somewhere will have a record of his family and a photo of him - better still a photo of him marrying my mother.