Tooele Ordnance Depot – The next time you feel that you simply can’t struggle with ration points another minute, you’d better look up Mrs. C. L. Balding, wife of Staff Sergeant C. L. Balding, a new member of the Tooele ordnance depot post engineer’s staff. Mrs. Balding arrived in the United States last April. She is one of the much-publicized Australian brides and if a two-hour interview is any criterion she’s going to be just as popular with the United States as the United States is with her. She says she really does like living here and can still hardly believe in the plentitude of everything for civilians.

Coming from Sidney, Australia, Mrs. Balding’s first impressions of the United States had to do with the bright lights of San Francisco and the delight of being able to buy clothes without ration coupons. She told of the thrill of going into San Francisco shops and being able to buy whatever appealed to her without regard to whether she had sufficient coupons. …Of the wonder with which she viewed the light of every size, color and description. After the blackouts of Sidney if was hard to believe.

“In Australia there has been a food shortage for civilians for three years. But here there is everything. You have all sorts of canned goods. Things we haven’t seem for years. But,” she added with pardonable pride, “there is always plenty for the armed forces.”

Praises Americans

Sgt. And Mrs. Balding arrived with their tiny son, Terry, the day after Christmas. Since then Mrs. Balding has done a fine job of making an attractive home in the TOD Park apartment. She is busy as can be mastering American ways and adjusting herself to life in an American wartime community. It is obvious that she is equal to any situation and that she will make many friends in her new environment. It’s that occasional heart-warming, Americanism in her speech which makes her charm so fatal.

(I found a listing for Ruby Jeanne Balding, wife of Clarence Balding arriving on the S.S. Lurline on April 5, 1944.)