IN 1943, none the wiser, Virginia M. Gloyne was just nineteen years old and there could not count herself as one of the few great Virginias in the world. Much was to live up to; acclaimed author Virginia Woolf, silent movie model Virginia Rappe, the silver screen's Virginia Grey, the Commonwealth of Virginia on the sweet eastern shores of the US, to name a few. She wondered if many men now stationed in Melbourne were born and bred in Virginia state, and if her name would trigger radical memories of scorching summers and comely apple-pie girls that lacked the local brogue of upwardly inflected sentences.
But the suntanned Australian girls suited the twenty-thousand US Marines just fine, and by the day, Melbourne was teaming with more and more of those khaki garrison caps, men like mosquitoes or gnats, buzzing in swarms around social hotspots and down the streets that she once felt safe enough to walk down without getting asked if she was a). single, or b). a "natural blonde". For the young people of the city in particular, Americans represented wealth, glamour and the modernity of the changing times. In some ways, these soldiers matched the Hollywood kind that were plastered all over art-deco style enlistment posters both home and away.
Therefore, the tram out of the city made a fine escape for Virginia, leaving behind the bright flame of Melbourne that drew men in like moths. In the history books, they'd call it THE MELBOURNE INTERLUDE as they rested, convalesced, andrefitted from previous combat operations, a time of their life when they for once felt like they were completely invincible as they lit up the towns like bushfire. For the Gloynes, it was an invasion of their home soil — especially for Samuel Gloyne, a devout realist and working policeman, who wanted nothing more than to shield his little girl from the monstrosities of the world that were occurring right on their doorstep, little but a boat's ride away.
Japan's involvement in the second of the world's Great Wars had been a real game changer in the grand scheme of things. The bombings of Pearl Harbour did nothing but drain American morale and equate to another front that the Allies had to fight on, leading to negotiations that would eventually funnel some of the most hard-assed of American men into the Pacific to engage in combat against the Japanese.
For a time, Australia had feared invasion; with most of their best forces were concentrated on foreign shores of different continents, in places like Africa and Europe, the main body of their homeland was left unprotected. Even in cities as far south as her own, people dug air raid shelters in their back yards and practised responding to gas attacks. Cities endured blackouts at night as a defence against bombing raids, which fortunately never came.
