My Grandfather's Story

[Horwood Beer-Master]

I wish I knew more about my Nan. She grew-up in Saxony (Germany) but I know there's some Swiss and maybe Austrian involved in her background somewhere. We suspect she may have come from a family that wasn't poorly off, but her immediate family never saw any of this money if there was any (suggesting some kind of 'disgrace' for her branch of the family perhaps? Leaving them disinherited?). I know she came over to Britain aged 18 with her brother looking for work, but I don't know if that was the only reason (this was sometime between Hitler coming to power and the start of the war). During the war, like a lot of Germans in the UK, she was sent to live on the Isle of Man. Also, at some point during the war (I don't know whether this was while she was on Man, or not) she fell pregnant. All she ever told about the father was that he was a British soldier who was killed in the D-day landings, they never married, meaning that at the end of the war she was living in Britain as possibly two of the most unpopular things you could be at the time, an unmarried single mother, and a German.

The baby was my half-uncle Ian who now lives in Canada, later on she met and married my Grandfather (who I never knew), and who already had at least four (I forget exactly how many, I've never known them that well) kids from a previous marriage, and they then had three daughters, of whom my Mum was the middle one.