Wartime couple built new life in Newfoundland DOUG GALLANT The Guardian

John Barrett, president of the Rotary Club of Charlottetown Royalty, welcomes Rev. Douglas Rollwage, left, and Barbara and Arthur Barrett to the club’s recent Remembrance Day program. Guardian photo

By Doug Gallant
The Guardian
While much of what is written about the Second World War focuses on the death and destruction that resulted when great powers clashed on the field of battle, not everything that came to pass in time of war was bad.
For many young men from this part of the world serving overseas during the war, their overseas posting proved to be a life-changing experience off the battlefield as well as on.
Such was the case of a dashing young flying officer from Newfoundland.
Flt. Lt. Arthur Barrett served with Bomber Command for three years, flying missions over Germany and occupied Europe.
While posted to a base in North Yorkshire, he met and fell in love with a beautiful young air raid warden who would eventually become his wife.
Arthur and Barbara Barrett recently recounted their wartime experiences and the life they built together in Newfoundland after the war for members of the Rotary Club of Charlottetown Royalty, a club their son, Charlottetown businessman John Barrett, now serves as president.
Barbara Barrett, a member of the Order of the Order of Canada and the Order of Newfoundland and Labrador, said her wartime duties as an air raid warden required her to shepherd people who were blind or hard of hearing into air raid shelters when the alarm sounded and to ensure people had access to working gas masks. She also worked, as many did, on a local farm, taking on chores others left behind when they answered the call to military service.
One fateful night she ventured to a dance at a local parish hall not far from a Canadian air base. No one was flying that night so many of the service personnel from that base attended the dance.
She had danced a few dances with other men when she caught sight of her future husband.
“There stood the most gorgeous man in uniform I had ever laid eyes on,” Barrett said. 
“He wrote that part,” Barbara joked, pointing to her husband in the audience.
They married in 1944.
When war ended, Flt. Lt. Arthur Barrett was posted to Germany as part of the occupying forces. In April of 1946, he shipped out to Canada, followed by his new bride four months later.
Adjusting to her new life in her new country took some time. Culture shock was a factor, but she had the support of a mother-in-law with first-hand experience.
“My mother-in-law had been a war bride in the First World War.”
Her new country would eventually open its arms and embrace her. She became an author, a playwright, a director, an adjudicator and a teacher. She became the matriarch of theatre in Canada’’ youngest province and a leader in the Guiding movement.
Arthur Barrett, who became a broadcaster and broadcast executive after the war, resurrected several wartime memories of service in England.
He spoke fondly of the rich farmlands that surrounded his wartime base, the hospitality of the people who lived there and the local pubs where servicemen downed a pint or two when they weren’t flying.
Although it was a harrowing time Barrett said he likes to recall some of the lighter moments like an occasion when a buddy in his squadron named Albert was invited to spend the weekend at the estate of Lady Redding.
Barrett said his buddy was invited because he could ride a horse and there was to be a fox hunt. All was well before the hunt but no one would speak to him after. Puzzled, he asked the butler why the silent treatment.
The butler told him when one spotted a fox it was customary to rise up in the saddle and say tally ho. He was told it was not acceptable to say, “Yippee, there goes the son of a bitch.”
On a more sombre note, Barrett spoke of the immense scale of the Second World War, the number of people who served and the number of people who laid down their lives for their country.
“We paid an enormous price for freedom,” Barrett said. “Will we ever learn? When will be place value on human life?”
Prayers of remembrance were offered at the meeting by Rev. Douglas Rollwage of Zion Presbyterian Church. Rollwage also brought another perspective of war. His father had been a pilot in the Luftwaffe during the Second World War. His mother had been a rocket scientist and had worked on the programs that produced the deadly VI and V2 rockets.
In 1951 they left Germany behind as the Cold War heated up and built a new life in Canada.
“They came to Canada to raise a family and to find peace and security,” Rollwage said.
They found all they were looking for, he indicated.