Home Run

My Father P.T.E John Bertie Pusey of

THE BUCKS BATTALION

THE OXFORDSHIRE AND BUCKINGHAMSHIRE LIGHT INFANTRY

My father was captured in May 1940 near Dunkirk, but he managed to escape, and made his way across the countryside to a village not far from Lens. He was then sheltered for many months by a French family (a mother and her two young daughters.)

My father, with the help of the French Resistance made his way to Gibraltar.

My mother at that time was pregnant with me and was informed that he was missing believed killed. It took him a year to arrive home.

In August 1944 he was badly wounded fighting in Normandy with the Seaforth Highlanders, and sadly died in February 1945 from his wounds.

After the war, through the “Red Cross”, the French family contacted my mother to enquire about my father and his expected child. For many years my mother kept in contact with the family by sending Christmas cards.

When my mother died in July 1983 I wrote to the French family informing them of her death, the youngest daughter Paulette, was surprised to hear from the daughter of the soldier that she knew as a little girl when only nine years of age.

We then became good friends by writing regularly to each other.

Paulette and her husband Gaston invited my husband and I to their home in France to visit her elderly mother who was living in a Residence Home, while we were there we were also taken to visit the village and the house where they lived in 1940 and where her mother found my father hiding in the garden shed. Paulette and Gaston made a return visit to England a year later to visit my fathers grave which is in High Wycombe Cemetery.

We still keep in touch through letters and since visited them again.

Sheila Jemmett

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