Obituary: Aileen Frances Croasdale who lived through perilous times during the Russian Revolution

FAITHFUL: Aileen Croasdale served Catholic parishes for more than 50 years.

Long service in music and church circles in Whanganui provide a counterpoint to Aileen Frances Croasdale's colourful childhood in Russia and China and the perilous times she and her family experienced during the Russian Revolution.

Mrs Croasdale died at Nazareth Rest Home on March 23, aged 101. At her funeral in St Mary's Church on March 31 memories she compiled were read to the congregation.

Her parents, James Gerald Doyle and Mary Louise McGrath, met in Shanghai and were married there in St Joseph's Cathedral. Their honeymoon was spent travelling to Siberia where her father was stationed at a settlement on the banks of the Amur River. This river marked the border between Siberia and Mongolia.

"I guess you could call it an outpost of the British Empire. What an Irishman in the employ of the British Government was doing in this Wild West situation I never knew or thought to ask. I think it had something to do with the smuggling trade," Mrs Croasdale said in her memoir.

"When my mother found that she was expecting her first child she went to Kobe, Japan, where her parents were living and there I was born (on November 14, 1915). Two years later when my brother, Michael, was expected she again went back to Japan - this time to Tokyo. When the third child was on the way the situation, due to the start of the Russian Revolution, was so dangerous that mother refused to leave my father and so Bryan was born in Siberia.

"It was all quite dangerous at that time and young as I was I knew that my father usually had a revolver in a holster and that the men under him had access to rifles. On one occasion I remember that all the women and children had to go on a riverboat. We knew that something was happening and that we might not see our father again. Years later mother told me that all the money of the settlement - men's wages, expense money etc - was sewn around her waist. It was a good thing that she was so slim in those days.

"But life was becoming more unsafe. The ferment of the Russian Revolution was gathering momentum. Mother told me that dad was known to be Irish, and because of the Sinn Fein uprisings in Ireland at that time we were guaranteed a certain amount of safety as my father was declared by the Bolsheviks to be 'one of us'.

"The last episode was the catalyst that brought us back to Shanghai. One night there were flickering lights of campfires surrounding our settlement. It was winter so the river was frozen over - the whole of the countryside was ice and snow. I recall my mother told us that we were going to sleep downstairs that night. She made a game of it as we helped pull down the mattresses and placed them under the billiard table. I saw dad put on his heavy furs and roll a large sheet around himself.

"When I was older I asked mother what that was all about. She told me that the compound was surrounded by revolutionaries and bandits and that before leaving us to reconnoitre the position he warned her that the situation was grave, that he and his men could be overcome and that we could all be killed.

"Shortly after that the British Government recalled their nationals from these danger spots and we went to Shanghai. It was there that my sister Dorothy was born. (The four of us are outsiders, so to speak. My sister Elizabeth is the only dinkum Kiwi among us).

"Shanghai was so different from Siberia. Everything fascinated me. One afternoon I was in our front garden and saw a wonderful sight. It was a small steamroller which crawled slowly along the road and so intrigued me that I opened the gate and followed it.

"It was not long before I was thoroughly lost. Shanghai was then divided into four quarters: British, American, French and Chinese. When we were safely in New Zealand I remember speaking to mother about my experience and she told me that European girls were sometimes kidnapped at that time - not for ransom, but for reasons I won't go into.

"She told me that she and my father were terrified and that every policeman in the British quarter was out looking for me. I can't remember now how or where I was found, but I was never smacked.

"In Shanghai I went to school at a convent run by an order of French nuns. It was an enormous building. Part of it was for children of consular and embassy staff, the other half was an orphanage for Chinese children. Because our playmates had been Russian, both my brother Michael and I spoke only Russian.

"That was fine because our parents were multi-lingual. I had also picked up a little French from my mother but when I entered the classroom it was a sad day for me.

"The nun spoke to me in English and I looked at her, then in French, and I kept on looking at her. Perhaps she had had a fraught morning, for she got up out of her chair, grabbed me by the arm and marched me to a corner of the classroom. I was placed there, facing the wall, and my pinafore put over my head. The only consolation I had was that when I was marched to my sad fate I passed a little boy, dressed in a white sailor suit, who was wearing a dunce's hat. As I went to my punishment, he winked at me and I have cherished that wink all my life!

"Because of Michael's delicate health we left China and finally landed in New Zealand, first on a farm near Dannevirke, then on another at Himatangi. In 1939 I came back from teaching at Utiku to help on the farm. War had been declared. My father was very ill and died in 1940. Bryan had enlisted, so Michael and I ran the farm.

"It was a difficult time but we managed to cope. The hours were long. We would be up before 4am and work until dark, but were sustained by the knowledge that our work was an essential part of feeding the 'Motherland' as England was then called.

"In the evenings we younger ones would be involved in other aspects of the war effort. I attended lectures by the Red Cross and was taught how to bandage broken limbs and wounds. As well, I joined the signalling corps where I learned morse code and how to use a helio lamp. So you could say that I was a member of the New Zealand branch of Dad's Army."

In 1944 she married Joseph Croasdale and came to Whanganui to live. The next year she was offered a position at Wanganui Girls' College "and as we were not blessed with children, I kept on teaching music".

In 1945 parish priest Fr Michael Burke asked her to take over the St Mary's choir.

Mrs Croasdale noted two highlights in her time as choir mistress and organist at St Mary's and St Anne's - more than 50 years. The first was when she was asked to compose a Mass in honour of Our Lady for the 150th jubilee of the Catholic community in Whanganui. The second highlight was in 2000 when she was invested with a Papal honour - the Benemerenti Medal - for her services to music in the church.

This medal was on her casket for her funeral Mass in St Mary's Church on March 31.