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This story was submitted to the People’s War site by Karolyn Milam of Uckfield Community Learning Centre, a volunteer from ´óÏó´«Ã½ Southern Counties Radio on behalf of Jose Loosemore and has been added to the site with her permission .Jose Loosemore fully understands the site’s terms and conditions.

When I was a girl of about 20 during the war I lived in the village of Minstead in the New Forest, with my parents, and I collected letters and newspaper cuttings to go into my wartime scrapbook.

Albert Pasturell came to the village as he had escaped from Jersey and had joined the British Army as a non-combatant in the Royal Engineers. He was billeted with my family. Albert knew that I kept a scrapbook and asked me if I would like his Red Cross letter to add to my collection. It was a letter that he had sent to his little boy aged 6, back home in Jersey. On the reverse of the letter was the reply from the little boy which was ‘Dear Daddy — Overjoyed with your letter. Sending all my love, kisses. Don’t forget my pony, bicycle & I have ten rabbits. Starting school October. This letter was dated 28/07/1942

In October 2004 I was looking at the monthly newsletter from the East Sussex Federation of the W.I. I saw an article from the Jersey Federation asking people to go over for a paid holiday and the contact name was Anne Pasturell. I rang to book a place but there were no vacancies. I asked Mrs. Pasturell if she was any relation of Albert Pasturell of Greenwood, Grouville, St, Hellier, Jersey. After a pause she said that Albert was her husband’s father.

A few weeks later, Mrs Pasturell rang me and said that someone had cancelled and that she now had a vacancy. I took the vacancy and went to Jersey. After 60 years I met the little boy of 6, now a grown man of 65, and gave him the original Red Cross Letter.

It was very poignant for me to meet this man who did not see his father again except for a brief stay in Jersey after the war. Albert returned to the mainland and was never heard of again

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