War Widows Guild providing comfort and friendship 70 years on

She has been widowed 44 years but military veteran Thelma Zimmerman has a ready response to why she’s never remarried: “When you’ve had the best — don’t worry about the rest.”

War widows Veronica Roberts, Helen Adamson, Lorraine Butler, Ellen Wilson, Margaret Elul-Jacobs, Debbie Glastonbury, Ann Selwood, June Hanley, Jan Grosvenor, Gillian Bell (front row) Claudia Cream, Coralie Chapman, Margery Stevens, Thelma Zimmerman, Shirley Cockshell, Margaret Weir, Brenda Fergusson, Colleen Fowler. Picture: Tricia Watkinson

She has been widowed 44 years but Thelma Zimmerman has a ready response to why she’s never remarried.

“When you’ve had the best — don’t worry about the rest,” the stalwart of the War Widows Guild of South Australia, and soon to turn 97, says about husband Alby.

From the moment they clapped eyes on each other as 15-year-olds at Hindmarsh School, Thelma Kinsman and Albert Zimmerman were inseparable — well, only separated by World War.

They married at 18 and joined the air force the same day in 1941 during the middle of World War II.

Thelma with her late husband Albert in 1943. Picture: Tricia Watkinson

The couple were sent for training in Melbourne where Alby joined the newly formed Air Construction Corps and Thelma was trained as a telephonist with the Women’s Auxiliary Australian Air Force.

But soon after, when the authorities discovered they were wife and husband, Thelma was sent back to Adelaide, where she spent the rest of the war.

Alby was shipped off to Asia and worked with a concreting team repairing airstrips blown-up and destroyed by the retreating Japanese troops on islands throughout the Philippines.

In the next four years, she only saw him for four days of R&R in Adelaide. Just weeks after he returned to duty Thelma discovered she was pregnant.

“When he came back permanently from the war I was in hospital just having delivered our daughter Dianne,” she adds.

“I didn’t know he was coming … he walked in and I was amazed. I was lucky he came back and not too badly damaged … many didn’t return.”

Aircraftwoman Thelma Zimmerman shows a letter to her husband Aircraftman Albert Zimmerman in February 1943.

Before enlisting, Thelma had been working at the Alaska Ice Cream factory at Thebarton, wrapping slightly more Eskimo Pie ice creams than she consumed.

She is from a long line of those who had served their nation and didn’t think twice about signing up.

“My family thought it was the right thing to do to serve,” she says.

‘My dad was in the First World War and I’ve got a brother (Sydney) who was a Rat of Tobruk 2/48th Battalion and my sister Jean (Koleff) took a dangerous job in the detonator section of the Penfield munitions factory.”

Her father, George Kinsman, was with the Australian 1/10th Battalion on the Western Front.

Gassed at war and then buried alive during a bombing raid before being dug out and resuscitated, he died prematurely aged just 46.

“Mum had 12 kids to look after,” Thelma remembers. “She put in for a war pension but got knocked back — and never realised she could reapply three months later.

“If it had been around then the War Widows Guild would have been such a support for her.”

With an emblem of a Kookaburra, the War Widows Guild was begun in Australia in Melbourne in 1945 by Jessie Mary Vasey, widow of Major General George Vasey who was killed en route to New Guinea during World War II.

The group promotes and provides companionship, counselling and support for its members, and lobbies governments to improve conditions and services.

Initially there was a focus on teaching handicrafts to members so that they could augment their inadequate pensions.

At a peak national membership in 1985 of 65,000 there are around 24,000 members today.

The Guild was established in South Australia in 1947.

War Widows Guild (SA) members Margery Stevens, Thelma Zimmerman, June Hanley, Shirley Cockshell, Margaret Weir. Picture: Tricia Watkinson

SA president Jan Milham, whose husband served in Korea, says all new members are welcome.

“We’re always keen on new members ... anyone who wants to join us can ring or email us,” Ms Milham, in her inaugural year as Guild president, said.

“We’ve got a diverse group of ladies with wonderful tales to tell. We don’t live in each other’s pockets but we’re here to support each other.”

Each state make arrangements to cater for members’ needs, but, beginning with the Aged Persons Homes Act of 1954 all make housing for their members a priority.

Ms Milham has lived for seven years in a unit on the property of the SA Widow’s Guild head quarters at Rose Park now owned by health care company ACH Group.

Her next door neighbour is Thelma Zimmerman.

Jan Milham. Picture: Tricia Watkinson

At war’s end Thelma, who worked as a hairdresser and still cuts her own hair to save money, spent another “wonderful” 30 years with Alby.

He worked for the Hallet Brick company and then in the public service in weights and measures before his early death in 1975.

She joined the War Widow’s Guild soon afterwards.

“It’s been marvellous,” she says. “There is such a lovely encompassing feeling with all this friendship.

“We support each other. We’ve all very different but have all had to deal with the loss of our loved ones.”