No political topic here, just a sweet article.
Vera is certain even now that it began with the red dress. London in the waning months of World War II was unbearably dark and dreary. Vera Cracknell was just 18, and sick of the anti-barrage balloons that blotted out the sun, sick of carrying the smelly rubber gas mask wherever she went. One day, a flash of color brought her to a halt outside a downtown shop window. Vera remembers her older sister shaking her head.
"You can't buy that! It would take all your coupons!"
The dress had tiny brass rivets and a twirly skirt. Vera was a junior hostess at an American Red Cross club behind Harrod's. Dancing with the flirtatious GIs let her forget the screaming bombers and deafening ack-ack guns. She handed over her entire year's worth of clothing rations and took the red dress home.
When she wore it for the first time, an American sergeant followed her into the club and asked her to dance. In the sunroom of his Leisure World condo near Leesburg, Charles Long recalls the moment with tender conviction: "It was love at first sight, absolutely." With her raven hair, porcelain skin and eyes the pale green of sea glass, Vera toyed with her share of suitors, but Charles persevered even after she stood him up on their first date.
They married when the war ended, and Vera soon found herself crossing the Atlantic aboard the Queen Mary, the famed luxury liner winding down her war service as part of an amazing armada carrying some 70,000 young British war brides and their babies.http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/02/11/AR2006021101455.html
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