Rita Slutzky’s Seal Beach home is cozy. She lives in peaceful retirement, surrounded by family photos and bygone trinkets.
At 98, her life’s denouement is average, prosaic even.
But her story — her journey to Seal Beach, to a quiet existence — was anything but.
Born in 1924 in the English port town of Grimsby, Lincolnshire, Slutzky battled a six-month bout of rheumatic fever as a teenager, sacrificed a college education to work on Spitfire planes during the Second World War, married an American soldier, and eventually journeyed across the Atlantic Ocean to America, building a new life in Chicago – and, eventually, California.
Slutzky even sailed aboard the Queen Mary. She did so just after its stint as a troop-carrying war vessel dubbed the Grey Ghost — but before people called the ship historic or legendary.
People often forget that while the Queen Mary is now a tourist attraction – and a somewhat rundown one at that, having spent years needing millions of dollars in repairs – the ship had a bellicose chapter. It hauled nearly 15,000 soldiers to aid Allied Forces in Europe until WWII’s end in 1945.
And the way Slutzky tells it, even after the war, sailing aboard the Queen Mary wasn’t an elegant affair.
Surviving the war
Slutzy came of age amid war.
She was just 15 when Nazi Germany, under the leadership of Adolf Hitler, invaded Poland in September 1939 — driving the United Kingdom and France to declare war on the country and its dictator.
Soon enough, the German air force, the Luftwaffe, began pummeling the UK. Slutzky recalled the sirens that signaled danger – that bombs were about to fall.
“(My two sisters) and I shared a bedroom and we’d run to the window,” she said about hearing the sirens. “If we saw anything up in the sky, we’d run down to the bomb shelter.
“And all I (could) hear was (one of my sisters) saying, ‘Don’t leave me.’ She was worried that we would run down to the air raid shelter and leave her up there in the bedroom,” Slutzky added. “It’s really something to remember.”
As a port town on the North Sea, Grimsby played a crucial role in the UK navy’s operations throughout the war. Its Royal Dock became the country’s largest base for minesweepers. Ex-fishermen from Grimsby worked alongside the Royal Naval Reserve, using tools from their previous fishing operations, to remove bombs off the coast of the North Sea.
The town’s airport was also requisitioned by the Air Ministry in 1940 and expanded to house a bomber squadron.
“We were a little town that was surrounded by fields, it was a lot of space,” Slutzky said. “I remember many times we would count the planes leaving and we’d count them upon (return and say), ‘Oh good, they’re all there.’ And then some nights, they were not — there’d be one missing or two missing.”
Slutzky’s dreams of attending college, among many other aspects of her life, were derailed. Bouts of illness, including a case of rheumatic fever that rendered her bed-ridden for six months and left her with a lifelong heart murmur, also hindered her.
She turned 18 in 1942 and shortly after, was drafted into factory work to support England’s war effort.
“I got a letter from the government to report to this place,” Slutzky said. “You have no choice.”
Slutzky left her hometown for Leicester to report for duty at a factory that manufactured fuel pumps for the country’s Supermarine Spitfire fighter planes. Those planes are renowned for helping secure the country’s victory in the yearlong Battle of Britain. It was, according to Britannica, the most highly manufactured British aircraft throughout the war.
“I stayed there (in Leicester) while I did the training,” Slutzky said. “Then I was fully qualified.”
Slutzky later found a job at a factory doing the same job back in Grimsby, she said, spending several months making Spitfire fuel pumps.
“That was amazing,” she said.
About a year later, in 1943, German forces dropped thousands of bombs in the Grimsby area, killing hundreds. Slutzky’s father, who fought for England in both the First and Second World Wars, was among those injured by the blasts.
“They called them anti-personnel bombs. You couldn’t see them, so anybody who walked near them could feel the movement of pavement and it would blow up,” Slutzky said. “That’s how my father got hurt.”
To visit her father in the hospital, after the bombs stopped falling, Slutzky and her mother had to trudge through wartorn town. Danger, she said, was still present.
“We got there all right, but when we tried to come home the same way, they wouldn’t let us go through there,” Slutzky said. “After we had walked already, they found a lot of bombs in that area that would go off the minute you made any movement. My mother and I were so lucky that we didn’t walk in that exact area where they found the bombs.”
Eventually, though, the sky cleared — in more ways than one.
Shortly after the Grimsby bombings, in 1944, Slutzky met an American soldier named Nathan Slutzky.
“He was very nice — he was very gentle and soft,” Slutzky said. “(He) never raised his voice or anything like that.”
By that time, Germany, with its multifront campaign and overextended supply lines, was already losing its grip on Europe.
In 1945, the war ended. The Allied Powers won.
And Rita and Nathan Slutzky married. Their wedding took place one year after they first met in a dance hall.
“We were all very happy,” Slutzky said of the war’s end. “I was married to an American — and he was going home and I was staying there (in Grimsby).”
At least until she was able to join her husband in the U.S. – which she eventually did.
War bride travels to America
Slutzky wasn’t the only bride waiting for passage to America.
The Queen Mary, after being relieved of its wartime duties, conducted dozens of war-bride voyages from Europe to the U.S. and Canada. More than 12,000 women and children sailed aboard the ship to join their husbands in America in 1946.
Slutzky was set to ride aboard the Queen Mary to New York that same year.
But it was not to be.
“We had to gather in another place called Tidworth, which used to be an army barracks — so we’d all be there until it was time to go to the ship,” Slutzky said. “I had all the papers ready; everything was right.”
Until, she said, the ship that went out before the Queen Mary broke down.
Since the Queen Mary had to go pick up the previous ship’s passengers, Slutzky was moved to the E.B. Alexander for that vessel’s maiden voyage to the United States.
For Slutzky, the journey marked the start of a new life – and an escape from battered, bloodied England.
“That was the first time in all those years I was with enough food and anything and everything that I wanted,” Slutzky said.
Hunger, she said, remains her most indelible memory of the war.
“I was really hungry,” Slutzky said. “Even with a ration, you only got a couple of ounces of something.”
Slutzky reunited with her husband in Chicago, where he worked for the U.S. Postal Service. She worked for an insurance company.
The war bride would return to England just four years later to visit her family.
And this time, she did so with the Queen.
“It wasn’t as elegant as they made it when it was stationed in Long Beach,” Slutzky. “I think they did it up a whole lot. It was more shiny — maybe someone went around with a cloth every day and polished it up.”
The journey was rough, Slutzky said, to the point that even the ship’s attendants — who donned ankle-length white coats — fell victim to the ocean’s sway, stumbling across the deck throughout the voyage.
“They were falling all over the place — even more than the passengers,” Slutzky said. “I think they were all first-time workers, but I guess you don’t ever get used to the rocking on board a ship.”
After her sojourn, Slutzky returned to Chicago.
But it wouldn’t be long before her next voyage – this time, to California.
West Coast reunions
Slutzky’s sister Eve also married an American soldier and traveled across the Atlantic.
But she settled in California.
The siblings, having survived WWII together, wanted to be near each other once more.
So in the early 1960s, Slutzky and her husband moved to Southern California.
“Naturally,” Slutzky said, “we wanted to at least be together if we could.”
Slutzky didn’t know it at the time, but her move out west would lead to another reunion.
After its final cruise in 1967, the Queen Mary retired in Long Beach.
Slutsky and her husband, meanwhile, bounced around a bit, including a spell in Lakewood. In 1989, they settled in Seal Beach, a short jaunt from the Queen Mary’s permanent home.
She and her husband, who died in 1995, settled into a quiet, middle-class, Southern California life, raising three children. Slutzky has 12 grandchildren and 14 great-grandchildren.
Slutzky was also a regular visitor aboard the Queen Mary after it became a Long Beach tourist attraction.
“I used to say, ‘Oh, I was on this one — and nobody ever questioned me,” she said. “I would sit on the side (of the ship) that faced Long Beach and just watch all the people.”
The Queen Mary has endured tough times in recent years, from apparent mismanagement to falling into disrepair – and even facing questions about its future.
Slutzky, meanwhile, is enjoying a peaceful denouement. And rightfully so. Slutzky came of age during World War II. She endured bombings and hunger and sickness. She married an American and journeyed to a new home across the Atlantic.
The irenic, latter chapters of her story have been well-earned – by a life well-lived.
Source: Orange County Register
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