This article written by Jackie Rickenberg was published in the Thursley Parish Magazine, August 2024
If you haven’t yet checked out the Wedding Belles exhibition on our website, it’s really worth a look. It was put on over the course of a weekend in 2007 and was a collection of photographs and stories of couples married in our beautiful church of St Michaels and All Angels. If you or anyone you know has been married in the church since 2007, and would like to have a photograph included, please send all the information to:
Of course, there were and are lots of people living in the village who did not get married here and this story is one such example. It is the romantic wedding story of a young couple, Captain Alastair Banks MC RHA and Corporal Ann Crichton WAAF, during World War 2, who then at some time in the future moved to Thursley (Springs in Pitch Place to be exact) and lived out the remainder of their lives here. Both were born in 1920 and Ann died in 1998 and Alastair in 2002. Both were very involved in village life for many, many years and are buried in Thursley churchyard. Their story was given to Sally Scheffers, by them, to be included in the first VE/VJ Day exhibition in 1995, celebrating 50 years. Prudent timing as we have just celebrated the 80th anniversary, plus also, their wedding took place in this month, the 12th August 1944.
“By 1944 standards it was no ordinary wedding. The Second World War had been raging for five years. Two months earlier, the Allies had finally opened the Second Front with the invasion of France on D-Day. The 23-year-old Captain Alistair Banks, who had been attached to a Royal Marine Commando unit, had gone ashore at Ouistreham on June 6th – to be welcomed by a German shell. He left France fairly sharpish, with fragments of metal in his legs and head. He was sent to convalesce at Somerley Park, a large house near Ringwood, Hants. By August he was up and about but still on crutches.
Meanwhile, Corporal Ann Crichton WAAF, his fiancée of six months – also 23 – was stationed at RAF Rudloe Manor near Box, where she worked in an underground bunker as a plotter. When she heard that Alastair had been wounded, she went AWOL (absent without leave) – but that’s another story. During July, she and her great friend Flight Sergeant Eleanor Higgins hitch-hiked several times to Ringwood to see the wounded soldier. During these visits it became clear that Alastair was going to be sent back to his unit in France within a month, so they decided to get married as soon as possible.
Easier said than done in wartime. There were shortages of all kinds. Food was seriously rationed – one egg a month, one ounce of butter a week; clothing could only be obtained with coupons which were hard to come by; and film (for wedding photos) was rare as hens’ teeth. Those weren’t the only problems facing the young couple. There were fatherly objections to the match from both sides. Dr Banks said the marriage would impede Alastair’s regular army career. Officers were not expected to marry before they were thirty – and, if they did, the army wouldn’t give them a marriage allowance. Dr Crichton thought that Alastair’s head wound was likely to send him potty. However, in the spirit of the times, the forced on regardless.
The formidable Granny Banks, then living at Burstall near Ipswich, moved into action. She decided that Bath Abbey possessed the requisite social cachet for her grandson to get married there. She had lived in Bath during the First World War; her sons Ian and Ronald had been born and christened there. She began to telephone the relevant people in Bath – the Archdeacon, for example, and the manager of the Pump Rooms where the reception was to be held. Meanwhile, just as it looked as though Granny Banks was going to hijack the whole affair, Ann ran into her cousin “Rockhouse” Jim and his wife Patricia, who had been living in Bath since they were married a couple of years previously. When the capable Patricia heard that Ann was getting married, she immediately offered to help. For a start, she lent Ann her wedding dress. It had to be taken in a few inches but where else does an impecunious WAAF corporal get a wedding dress in wartime Bath?
There was no time for banns to be called, and the couple had no money for a special licence. So, some jiggery-pokery was called for. The only legal way of achieving the desired result was for Ann and Alastair to go through a Registry Office in Chippenham. In those days, Registry Offices were not like today’s more elegant premises. The Chippenham one was dingy and there appeared to be boxes of kippers stacked in one corner. The witnesses were Eleanor and one of Alastair’s Royal Marine comrades. Owing to the emotional nature of the occasion, Alastair and the Marine had fortified the inner man and as a result were running fractionally behind schedule. Ann had her rollers in under her WAAF hat. The mists of history have closed over some of the ensuing events. Suffice to say that A) they were duly – and officially – married, B) there was an altercation over a highly polished Sam Browne belt, and C) a brand-new wedding ring found its way – temporarily – into a gutter in Chippenham.
The sun, as Alastair is forever reminding his children, always rises again tomorrow, as it did on this occasion. Chippenham was forgotten, and Bath Abbey awaited. There hadn’t been any time for proper invitations. It was almost impossible to get time off. And, even if you could get leave, it was almost impossible to travel. So, the guest list comprised only very close family, Ann’s WAAF friends, and Alastair’s Royal Marine colleagues who by coincidence were quartered next door to the WAAF camp at Box (the fence between the two camps had a substantial number of person-sized holes in it!).
It was the time of Doodlebug raids on London. Some braved the horrors of wartime travel to get to the wedding. Ann’s sister Liz, nobly travelled on a train from Scotland, standing all the way. She couldn’t even stay for the reception as she had to get back to her WAAF unit the same day. Ann’s friend Diana Miller came up from Devon to be Matron of Honour. Alastair’s Best Man was going to be his battery commander (also recovering from wounds received in Normandy) but, almost at the last moment, brother Peter arrived literally out of the blue, having flown over in a Mustang fighter from his forward airfield in Normandy. So, he became Best Man. Peter had arrived in the flying gear he stood up in, so an urgent request went out to the Royal Marines for a pair of boots. The boots – size 13 – duly squeaked fiendishly all the way down the aisle. Granny Banks meanwhile had whisked Peter into Moss Bros or the equivalent and hired a service uniform for the occasion.
The wedding in the Abbey, conducted by the Archdeacon himself, was stupendous. On one side were the light blue uniforms of the bride’s WAAF friends, and on the other side were the dark blue uniforms of the bridegroom’s Royal Marines. For the reception, the resourceful Patricia scrounged food supplies from friends, and her husband and Grandpa Banks organised booze from nowhere. Granny Banks talked the local newspaper into sending a photographer to take one or two pictures, and Ann’s WAAF friends contributed one clothing coupon each towards her rather fetching French blue going-away outfit.
After the reception in the famous Pump Rooms, Peter beetled off to fetch his Mustang and returned to circle the Abbey at an alarmingly low level, doing a victory roll and weaving round its towers – much to the dismay of Granny Banks and others. He later explained that there were no markings on his plane so he knew he could get away with it.
The happy couple caught the train to Cornwall for the honeymoon, standing wedged in the corridor all the way to Plymouth. Alastair had a fortnight’s leave but Ann had only one week. The second week was punctuated by telegrams from the RAF, ordering Corporal Crichton to return to duty immediately. Ann – or Corporal Banks, as she now was – gaily tore them up, knowing that her unit was no longer playing a vital role in the war effort. On return to duty, however, she was put on a charge for going AWOL (again!) but got away with it by weeping copiously when up before the Wing Commander. Her punishment? – the word “Admonished” stamped in her paybook.
Almost immediately after the honeymoon, Alastair was posted to 6th RHA in Norfolk, and finally after a lot of to-ing and fro-ing rejoined his own regiment, 4th RHA. Ann and Alastair didn’t meet again until after the German surrender in May 1945 when she was reunited with him in Germany where he was stationed.
For 50 years, they shared their lives, the majority of it in Thursley”.