A Warminster writer is set to launch her latest book at The Athenaeum this April.
Victoria Coombes’s memoir, ‘Wife of…’, offers a compelling insight into life as a young military spouse in the 1960s, sharing her experiences of marriage, motherhood and the challenges of living under the rigid hierarchy of the British Army of the Rhine.
Her book explores childbirth in military facilities, the unique bonds formed between wives, and the strict rank system that separated certain families.
Victoria was inspired to put pen to paper in 2021 after visiting the Foe to Friend exhibition at London’s National Army Museum, which detailed the history of the British Army in Germany since 1945.
Victoria, 82, recalled, “I suddenly realised I was part of this history and was lucky to have some good memories of the period. It was a very different world back then for young women in their twenties. We hadn’t had a female Prime Minister, and men dominated every aspect of life.“I thought I’d write down my memories of the time so they were recorded. I was fortunate to have held onto a lot of documents from my time in Germany, which were useful to reference—like my driving licence, documents from giving birth, and military programmes about music events.
“Writing the book took me four years from start to finish.”
Victoria, née Gilkes, was 23 years old when she married Captain David Coombes in 1966. The couple went on to live in Germany, Hong Kong, and Iran and had four children together. In Wife of…, Victoria focuses on their life in Germany, where Captain Coombes served in the British Army of the Rhine, the British post-war military force in Germany.
The title of the memoir, Wife of…, is inspired by the British Army’s system at the time, which defined women by their husbands’ rank and name—symbolising the identity struggles faced by military spouses of the era.
Victoria added, “We were all living in different countries without our families or the type of communication people have today. Because of that, the people we lived near became our family. As military wives, we relied on each other and would help out if a friend’s child was sick, for example.
“A theme that runs through the book is this ‘sense of adventure’. We didn’t always know where we would live next, what our housing would be like, or where our next posting would take us. There was a sense of the unknown about the whole thing. I’m excited to share the book with people and hope it will be a page-turner.”
Victoria has lived in the village of Bishopstrow, near Warminster, since 2003 and has been based in Wiltshire since 1986. She was previously editor of the Army Wives Journal and spent two years as publisher for the Warminster People website. Her marriage to Captain Coombes ended in 1995, and he passed away in 1999. She has included a special tribute to him in Wife of….
On Saturday, 12th April, from 10am to 12pm, Victoria will give a talk at The Athenaeum to mark the release of her new book, which will also be available to purchase. She added, “I am very excited to be having an event to launch my new book at our local Athenaeum. I hope it will be of interest to many, especially the ex-military readers in this area!”
Signed copies will be on sale for £8.
