Beryl de Galleani
97-year-old Beryl de Galleani was born in Malaysia and travelled to nursery school in a rickshaw. Aged six she was brought to England and was educated in two different boarding schools and by a governess in Scotland. She became a driver in London during World War Two and was outside Buckingham Palace on D Day waving at the King and Winston Churchill. She got married, helped run a pig farm, a hotel, and finally retired to Dartmouth. Now she spends her days watching the Dart from her picture window in Above Town. Steph Woolvin has been finding out more…
A petit, dainty figure with a pearly voice, Beryl de Galleani is sat on her sofa chatting to her friend on the phone about “a marvellous lunch” she has been to this week. She lives in a beautiful house overlooking the river with the sun beaming into her living room. You wouldn’t think she was nearly 100 with a bucketful of stories to tell about her past. “One of my best memories was shouting “We want the King!” standing outside Buckingham Palace on D Day. There were thousands and thousands of us in that crowd,” she says. Beryl remembers meeting at The Berkeley Hotel and going out onto the streets: “Someone picked me up and put me and a friend on the roof of a van. We bumped along The Mall; it was so exciting.”
When war broke out Beryl was sent to the War Office in London to work for FANY - First Aid Nursing Yeomanry. She drove a staff car and would take top brass to various destinations in the capital and around Britain. “We got a month’s training in Camberley, then it was straight into the job. I enjoyed the responsibility and I loved being in London. I made plenty of new friends - the other girls and I would go out all the time after work and would often go to the Ritz for dinner as a three course meal was only five shillings, we felt like millionaires!”
She says they got used to the bombing and general war life and thought nothing of walking along with tin hats and gas masks. “I lived near Sloane Square and I remember looking out the top floor window one day and seeing my first doodlebug. I heard a funny noise and saw what looked like a tiny aeroplane with flames coming out of its tail. I later learnt it was a mini flying bomb sent from Germany. You were always okay until the doodlebug cut out, that meant it had ran out of fuel. You had five seconds to run before it would fall and explode. So many people said the war was the happiest time of their lives; girls got important jobs for once and people met their husbands but I lost so many friends in that war - we were constantly receiving news of another poor soul who had lost his life. My age group was pretty much wiped out.”
Beryl was born in a place called Batugajah in Malaysia. Her father was sent out there after World War One to create new tin mines. They weren’t out there very long before moving again to Kuala Lumpur. “I liked it there very much. My sister Shirley was 18 months younger and we had so much fun playing together, it was bliss for children. We went to a nursery school called Miss Skinners and were taken by rickshaw. All the children were English, like us, they had dads working over there too.” When children reached the age of six they had to leave the nursery so the sisters were sent to England and spent the next 10 years living with different relations whilst their parents stayed out in Kuala Lumpur.
“We stayed on the edge of Exmoor and were sent to boarding school – it was a sad little place, everyone was miserable because their parents were miles away, we all had that in common. Everyone went home at holidays and weekends to grandmothers, aunts or cousins.” They were at the school for three years, before being moved up to Scotland to live with their godfather who was a Seaforth Highlander with the army and had two children, Philippa and James. They had a governess called Miss Murow who arrived each day to teach them. “I learnt pretty much everything I know today from her. I was so pleased that we didn’t have to go to school and could play outside for ages. Those were four of my happiest years.” But it came to an end when Beryl was 12 and her parents sent her to a boarding school in Sherborne, Dorset where they stayed until they were 16.
“It was very big, I got lost many times. I enjoyed tennis and was actually pretty good and I received coaching but other than that I disliked the whole experience as I was permanently homesick for Scotland and my godfather. It wasn’t unusual in those days for parents to work away and pack their children off to relatives. Many children didn’t really know their parents that well but they still loved them dearly.”
After Beryl’s important role in the war she went to live in Camberley with a cousin and worked in her market garden business. Not long after she met her husband, Frank, at a polo dance, they got married and moved to Buckinghamshire. “I became a housewife which was the norm for so many women back then. It was peculiar after having such an active role during the war but I wasn’t resentful. I soon became a mum – I had Tessa first, then Mark two years later.” Frank was an export manager but, after a couple of years, he decided, out of the blue that he wanted to run a farm! So they upped sticks and moved to Liskeard in Cornwall and bought a small pig farm.
“The place was pretty run down and overgrown and I remember waking up really early for the first few weeks, putting my big gloves and wellies on and cutting back the weeds and bushes. I would feed and weigh the pigs whilst running a guesthouse at the same time.” The children went to a local school and Beryl said they all generally enjoyed life down there. But when Tessa was 12, Frank got ill so they had to sell up and they bought the White House Hotel at Chillington. Frank couldn’t work so Beryl did most of the jobs helped by two members of staff. They stayed for about eight years, by then the children were grown up and had moved away so they decided to retire to Dartmouth.
“We had a small house at first but then Frank bought a boat and he wanted to keep an eye on it so we moved closer to the water. I must say retirement has been so much fun. In the early stages I played tennis as much as I wanted and we went on many boat picnics with friends, it was wonderful.”
But Frank died when Beryl was 73 and, like so many other widows, she says she carried on living a life which was the same but different. “I had many friends to help me through and Tessa who lives in the town. Now I go to lectures at the Flavel and get involved in U3A events. If I was a young person today I think I would have trained to be an osteopath. My husband went to see one and she taught me a little about how to help with his aches and pains and I thought it was very interesting. But all in all I can’t complain I’ve had a pretty interesting life!”
First published By The Dart magazine August 2018