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In 1943, Barclay Patoir left his home in what was then British Guiana to embark on a secret journey. His attention had been grabbed by an ad in the paper: Your Mother Country Needs You. The British government urgently required engineers to help with the war effort, and Barclay, an engineering student, was chosen over thousands of apprentices to fulfil this role.

Carrying with him just a rucksack and his passport, he embarked on a trip from the tropical climate of his home country up to Canada, then across the North Atlantic – braced at all times for a U-boat attack – to a war-torn Liverpool. Barclay never made a return journey and England became his home.

In Legacy of War, the way in which wartime experiences filter down through generations is explored. Barclay’s story, which intertwined with that of his wife Gertrude (Trudy), is one of great sacrifice and loss, but ultimately also hope. Here’s how his legacy lives on today.

Meanwhile, the match factory in which Trudy worked was destroyed by a bomb, and with it her job. Needing to bring money home to her mother, she applied for a job at Avro, and was assigned as Barclay’s assistant.

While Trudy was at first apprehensive about working with a black man, they soon took a shine to one another.

“Everyone used to laugh at us” Trudy recalled, “they’d say ‘he’s ruining you isn’t he?’ He used to bring me sandwiches in and make me cups of tea.”

The two of them started going out, attending concerts and the cinema together. It was here that people would make their racial prejudices known, spitting at them in the street.

The most cutting prejudice came, however, from Trudy’s own family. Both her mother and brother rejected her on account of her relationship with Barclay. Trudy’s mother eventually came round when Trudy and Barclay’s daughters were born, but her brother never knowingly saw them again, swearing he wanted nothing to do with her or her family.

Trudy and Barclay with their daughters

However, at a family funeral Trudy’s brother, whose eyesight was very poor, inadvertently had a long chat with his brother-in-law Barclay. Together they put the world to rights and he remarked “that was a nice chap – who was that?”

Trudy and Barclay’s daughter Betty explains that her estranged uncle also met her sister some years later. “She was a chaplain at a local hospital,” explains Betty, “and she happened to be there when my uncle was brought in with very advanced cancer. She was there as he died, giving him a blessing … he just whispered ‘tell Gert, I’m sorry about that’.”

Barclay went on to become the president of the local social club. There, he offered opportunities to individuals who could have been headed for trouble. Recently, at Barclay’s 100th birthday party, two of these men came forward to mention the life-changing impact his compassion had had on them, in keeping them on the straight and narrow and showing them where exemplary behaviour could take them.