The Life & Times of a Social Experiment - Fragment 1

Jun 28, 2023

This is my story. Well, the start of it, anyway. Honestly, putting it ‘out there’ feels really scary. I’m doing it because a couple of friends suggested that I do so. They think it might add something a little different and possibly useful to the world - particularly, maybe, for other adopted children. Well, we’ll see.

It’s also a means to try to communicate some of the factors that made the post-war world what it was, and to show how astonishingly different things now are. L.P. Hartley’s line that “The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there” seems mighty appropriate.

The reason for ‘social experiment’ in the title will become clearer over time. Anyway, here goes …

Beginnings

At the tender age of just fifteen months I changed my name. I didn’t have a say in the matter but later, when I learned about it, I wasn’t too unhappy because I didn’t like the original. Roger. No disrespect to other Rogers but I can’t say I’m keen. Roger became David. Now, decades later, I think about it only rarely. In fact, I only got to learn what little detail I have about the event when I was in my sixties. That revelation changed my life. Before it, I could kid myself I was some sort of child of the universe, exempt from the rules that govern the rest of humanity, but when I learned about my real origins there was no escaping the fact that my genesis happened through the same process as everyone else’s. It was comforting in one way, disappointing in another.

As you may have surmised, the Roger-to-David metamorphosis was an adoption. Aged 25 years, my biological Mum, who lived in Plymouth, Devon, in south-west England, had a fling (a month, a week, a night, an hour, five minutes? No idea.) with an American soldier. The few details that I do have I only learned decades later. The vital coupling must have taken place in early 1945. At the moment of my conception World War Two was still in process but drawing to a close. VE (Victory in Europe) Day was 8^th May that year, and VJ (Victory over Japan) Day 15^th August. So, when I popped out in late October, it was into a world at peace with, presumably, bluebirds fluttering over the white cliffs of Dover.1

World War Two wasn’t a bundle of laughs for any part of the UK but Plymouth came in for particularly aggressive treatment. As home to the leading British naval dockyard at the time it was bound to attract the attention of Hermann Goering’s Luftwaffe. In 1940, came the first of what would ratchet up to a total of 59 bombing raids. So, from 1941, to protect little people like me, the area’s maternity care was moved ten miles west to a place of greater safety called Flete House.

Although Flete House, at Ermington, near Ivybridge, is first mentioned in the Domesday Book, the ‘modern’ imposing mansion exists thanks to a rebuilding in the 19^th century. The history books reveal that, in its time, a number of distinguished guests crossed its threshold, including Queen Mary, the Prince of Wales who subsequently did a brief turn as King Edward VIII, and the Duke and Duchess of York who later became King George VI and Queen Elizabeth, the mother of the late Queen Elizabeth II. For a time, apparently, T.E. Lawrence (a.k.a. Lawrence of Arabia) helped in the gardens. And it was there, in October 1945, that I emerged into the world. Yes, I was born in a stately home. Well, why not?

The trouble was, Mum couldn’t cope with me. I don’t think it was anything I said. More to do with other things going on in her life. Again, the shadowy knowledge that I now have of it all I only learned decades later.

Anyway, it seems I was just one of 22,000 kids born between 1942 and 1945 to women who succumbed to the charms of U.S. soldiers2 so I shouldn’t make myself out to be too damn special. In fact, I’ve recently been told that in the small Chilterns village where, nearly eighty years after my conception, I now live, eighteen little Anglo-American poppets popped out during those years. Eighteen, in one small village! Those GIs had balls.

Mind you, it is perhaps not so extraordinary when you consider the overall numbers. American military personnel started arriving in the UK in 1942 but the real build-up came in preparation for D-Day. According to an account of this period, by May 1945, 2,914,843 American servicemen and servicewomen had arrived in the British Isles by sea, together with more than 100,000 by air.3 The impact on the resident population of just 40 million (with many of the men away at war) was enormous ... including, of course, the fact that one of these guys kindly volunteered to co-create me.

The American forces helped change Britain in other ways, too. Up until that time, ‘decent’ women did not go on their own into public houses – for the most part, they didn’t even accompany their menfolk to public houses. The GIs changed all that. And I know from local history records here in the Chilterns that the U.S. service personnel were deeply unimpressed by some aspects of our lives. So it was, I’m told, that the village where I now live first acquired mains sewerage. Thanks guys.

So, given that I was one of more than 22,000 little fruits of Anglo-American cuddles, I was not exactly a rare commodity. But, of course, we are all special. Very special. It is salutary to remind yourself, dear reader, that you are a one-sperm wonder. Each of us is the result of a multi-million-strong shoal of sperms, fired into a fluid through which they swim like billy-oh to locate an egg. A vicious shoot-‘em-up game ensues, each sperm blindly flailing its way in what it hopes is the general direction of a fallopian tube, all the while having to avoid white blood cells that think the little bastards are intruders to be exterminated. Perhaps one sperm makes it. Bingo. Although, even then, the odds of the newly fertilised egg making its way to the uterus and to term are not assured.

Whatever the outcome, there are no ‘well done for taking part’ badges for the also-swams. They shall grow not. Age shall not weary them. At the going down of the sun and in the morning they won’t merit a single, solitary thought. Only the winner is remembered if and when it makes it through the entire process and kickstarts a brief span in the game of life. So much for Equity, Diversity and Inclusion.

Checking online, I learn that the estimated odds of any of us being born is calculated at around 1 in 400 quadrillion (that’s 1 in 400,000,000,000,000,000 since you ask). Hell, how special do you want to be!

Now, where was I? Oh yes. So, there I am, fifteen months old, having won the Gamete Games but then getting handed off to new parents called George and Nellie, and bussed the 60 or so miles westward from Plymouth, Devon to Truro, Cornwall.

George and Nellie. What a couple! I grew to love them but there’s no denying they were odd. And it’s not just me saying that. When I was seventeen, my ‘adopted godfather’, Rupert (more about him as we go along), declared: “They shouldn’t have been allowed to adopt a cat.” Was he right?4 Well, let’s see.

Introducing George

George was born on 17^th April 1908 in Stapleford, a few miles west of Nottingham in the English Midlands. His mother, Mary Jane, died in childbirth. This tragedy set the scene for a disturbed life because, as George told it, his father (also named George) blamed him for killing his mother. You just get born and you’re accused of murdering your mother! Not the best start, I’m sure you’ll agree.

George’s mother and father had married only ten months previously, on 22^nd June 1907. George’s father is shown on the marriage certificate as being 38 years old at that time, and Mary Jane was 32 years old and already a widow. Life could be tough in those days.

George told me of a childhood being passed from one relative to another, often having to sleep on hard floors. Unsurprisingly, the horrible accusation of killing his mother, and the ongoing physical and mental ill-treatment resulted in an inability to cope with life generally, and not infrequently in later life blackouts and hospitalisation when the pressures overwhelmed him.

George told me that Jesse Boot (1850-1931) of Boots the chemist had offered him an apprenticeship but his father would not allow it. Boots was founded by Jesse’s father, John Boot, but it was Jesse who turned it into the “Chemists to the Nation” brand that exists to this day. Was this claim true? I don’t know, but it certainly sounds consistent with the abuse meted out to George.

Unloved and deprived of any proper structure or education he was damaged and deeply unhappy … but he was a biggish lad and therein lay a sort of solution. Lying about his age, he was able to get into the British Army before his sixteenth birthday. There, he found some structure and support that had up until that point been missing in his life. He then remained in the British Army until the end of the Second World War.

The last two years of his Army career were spent in India. He adored the country and its people. This is also where adopted godfather Rupert Bliss comes into the picture: a Church of England minister, he was the regimental padre and demonstrably cared deeply for George and, subsequently, me.

George was conscientious and co-operative, a fact that led to his being promoted, on several occasions, but it always resulted in the same outcome. Elevated from private to corporal, the added responsibility caused him to mentally crash, and down he’d go to private again. At some point, I don’t know quite when, this yo-yoing and his general behaviour led to his being officially classified as disabled through ‘psychoneurosis’. This was a time well before many mental health conditions were properly understood, and it helped that at least this level of recognition was given.

George seems, thankfully, to have had a generally cautious disposition that led him to forswear alcohol from an early age. George in his cups doesn’t bear thinking about. And with regard to religion I don’t think he was ever a great believer, but he appreciated the kindness and companionship of religiously-minded people. He was drawn toward non-conformist branches of Christianity, particularly Methodism. During my childhood I was also taken by George and Nellie to Baptist, Salvation Army and Congregational services but Methodism topped their list. Indeed in 1935 or 1936, it was at the Wesley Methodist Chapel in Plymouth that he met Nellie.

Next time, I’ll introduce Nellie and progress the story further. In the meantime, if you are of a mind, please do et me know what you think.

Aargh! by David Pinder

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