Dependents

 The pieces I plan to post next (and so many of these never make it), which are seen through the lens of life as a military "dependent" came out of a draft about how parties used to be in the military, which in turn came out of a piece about the importance of welcome. I realised how much life has changed and how things that from some viewpoints were anachronistic then, would not even be recognised by or would horrify my children today and so I thought they might be worth recording.

Dependents
"Dependent" in this context is interesting.  It referred to wives and children.  There were very few female officers at the time I am writing of.  I never met one and certainly not a senior one.  The first woman I heard of that was an officer was a girl I did the very first military Potential Officer Course with when they, which is to say the Royal Corp of Transport, first accepted women.  She went on to become a captain some years later and probably had a successful military career.  "Dependent" smacks, today of uselesness, a woman who trailed round after her far more important husband being his support.  

In many ways that was exactly what happened although from inside, it was known that the men couldn't do it without them.  Almost literally.  I don't think I knew any single senior officers.  There were a couple of divorced ones but it was very unusual.  The one I knew was a quiet type. It was at house, socialising with his son, where I first heard Bach, which dad,  Mozart and Beethoven man, never got used to.  It was a distinctly more intellectual household than ours.  I mentioned Bach to dad who looked as though I'd said something slightly suspect and distasteful.  Had I understood dad's views on Communism at the time I might have thought the guy was a hop and skip away from Communist sympathies.

Absent wives tended to be painted as faintly scurrilous.  There was one chap who ran off with a younger model and we were all very sympathetic towards the original wife.  It wasn't done you see, to chuck over your wife. There was one woman, I think her husband left her too, I think, rather than the other way round.  She stayed it was us for a night after this.  The atmosphere in the house was sad and tense.  In the morning, her room reeked of cigarette smoke.  It also wasn't done to smoke in other people's guest rooms. Soon after she committed suicide. Men weren't supposed to harm women. It went with the culture.  That's probably why divorcing them when they traipsed round the world after you, as dependents, entertaining, having children, packing and moving and leaving their families and friends, wasn't done.

If a wife ran off and the man married again, it wasn't held against him.  He had done the right thing.  No one said so, but it was obvious:  being a military officer was awkward without a wife.  It was awkward at dinner parties, awkward at bridge, he couldn't entertain but had to be entertained.  It just didn't balance.