Three-year-old Margaret was teetering on the edge of a sash window. 

“I was sitting on the windowsill, waiting for my turn to go in the bath,” she said. “One of the boys was playing with [the sash cord]. I remember the nurse saying stop that, which of course made him do it.” 

“He pulled the cord, opened the window and out I went!” Margaret’s legs flung over her head as she crashed into the garden below, breaking her arm.

Swept off to hospital, Margaret remembers “nothing but kindness. I did so well and the nurses gave me a packet of sweets.” When she got back home, she sat on the potty and stuffed the tube of sweets up her jumper so nobody else could have it. “Because we had to share everything. No one's going to have these, they’re mine.” This was the first time, after a few charmed years on Earth, that Margaret had something just for her. Why? In her house, life was different.

It was the mid-1940s and the last cannons of war had fallen silent. The Allies had won the war, which some of England's football fans would never stop singing about. Life was springing back to a battered nation and few places felt that pulsing energy as Margaret’s home did. She lived with twenty of her “siblings” in a gorgeous brick building boasting over thirty rooms, with red chimneys sprouting from its roof. Located in the heart of the 12,500-acre Holnicote Estate in South West England, it was a postcard-worthy paradise touching fields, woodlands and the shore. It's the kind of place bare toes should glide through. 

Unlike other family units, Margaret and the children were not taken care of by one or two parents. Instead, a squadron of young women, some just eighteen years old, looked after them, trotting the children past thatched cottages and the village church. “All the villagers [were] interested [in us], and they donated toys,” Margaret remembered. “Every day was like a summer's day,” one of Margaret’s  “siblings” said of those early times. 

But there was a reason Margaret’s family unit was unconventional. The women looking after her were not mothers, aunts, sisters, or even relatives – they were employees on a payroll, and none of her “siblings” were blood relatives, either.  Holnicote House wasn’t a family home – it was an orphanage, and she was living in a place set up specifically for mixed-race children. 

Her name back then was Margaret Patricia Windsor, but today she is called Deborah.

Inside the orphanage were some of the “GI Babies” as they are now known – the roughly 2000 children born from white British women and African American soldiers. 

In 1942, the black British population was around 7000. Yet during the war, 240,000 African American GIs came over, with “cigarettes, Coca-Cola, candy and chewing gum.” 

“Got any gum, chum?” children would say to the soldiers, to which the reply “Got a sister, mister?” would come back. 

Britain’s colour bar is rarely spoken or written about today, yet during the war, this was thrust into focus. “The segregation set up across the country involved passes for entry to towns near to American bases. In some towns, access for blacks and whites was given on different days, while other towns were permanently designated ‘whites only’ or ‘blacks only’ for the war’s durations,” wrote the author Lucy Bland. “In many villages, pubs were segregated along colour lines. Dances were held for black GIs one evening, whites the next. ”

In spite of this, thousands of men and women, regardless of their background, fell in love. Children like Deborah were the result. Yet she, and hundreds of other babies, were given away. Finding out why would become a life’s mission, one that unfurled in unexpected and moving ways.

***

During those first five, happy years in Holnicote, Deborah played with her brothers and sisters almost non-stop. Imagine if the lunchtime breaks in the TV show Recess never ended – that's what life at Holnicote felt like for Deborah. “I knew nothing else,” Deborah said. “We didn't know about parents… Mummy and Daddy… that wasn’t in our vocabulary.”

As they played and laughed, the children didn’t realise that they were being photographed for advertisements pasted across the country, asking families to adopt them. The nurses would kit the kids up in cute clothes and assemble them for photographs to show to prospective parents. Looking at the pictures now, you see kids playing on bicycles, or their arms full of puppies. 

When couples would visit Holnicote to meet the children, “Leon, one of Deborah’s friends, would always come out and say ‘OH, have you come to take me to your house?” wrote Lucy Bland. “Have you come to be my mummy? Have you come to be my daddy?” 

***

Some from Holnicote remained in the care system until adulthood, but not so for Deborah. Along with a younger child, Deborah was adopted by a mixed couple named Sid and Queenie. She was five at the time. Their new home was across the country, in Leigh-on-Sea, Essex, where Deborah was enrolled in a prep school. 

Calamity came. 

“Every child there could read and they could certainly write their name in the book [...] Because the thing about Holnicote House, they cared and loved us and gave us all that nurturing and security,” Deborah said, “but they didn't teach us anything!”

Deborah was teased while she worked, fostering a powerful drive within her. “You want to be better than anybody else. That constant need to prove yourself… And I shouldn’t need to do that, really. Be who you are and do your best.”

In this new environment, Deborah struggled to fit in at home and school, where she was subjected to what today is seen as racist abuse. “In Holnicote, we all shared that common background. There was no risk of judgement or comment,” she said. “During the 1940s and 1950s, there weren’t many people of colour. We were before the Windrush diaspora from the West Indies. Being mixed-race back then carried a social stigma. When we were all eventually adopted, we all experienced a kind of difficulty. And that’s when all the name-calling, the stares, and the ‘Mummy, why is that person black?’ started. I’d never been called n****r, golliwog or anything like that until I moved there. School really punched it to you. That’s where you got the n****r, the go back home.”

“It was difficult on both sides. On my father’s side, we were a source of shame,” she said. Deborah’s mother was black and ashamed of her own background, trying to conceal it. “I remember her putting [...] this pale make-up on and straightening her hair.” 

“I'm not blaming them. I'm sure they did what they felt was the best. Physical punishment was the norm then. It was very hard for both of us, for all of us. Very hard.” 

When asked if she felt a sense of love from her new parents, Deborah replied: “No.”

In these tough years, Deborah must have wondered where her biological parents were…

***

Deborah needed to get out. Ten years roared by but the days within them dragged, until an opportunity to live and work in a nursing college appeared. She grabbed the opportunity with both hands. “That was the first time since childhood I’d met other mixed-race people.” Healthcare was a place of diversity then, and now: today, over twenty percent of NHS staff are people of colour. 

As a young girl in Holnicote, nurses and carers had shown Deborah kindness. When the time came, Deborah responded by following that exact same career path, putting the joy she had received back into the world. The NHS was a home for some people, especially the nursing cadets who lived together 24/7, as Deborah did. They became her family. “I loved nursing,” she said.

***

“My first big passion was with a West Indian,” Debora said. “Oh, he was gorgeous, the classic: tall. And he was mixed-Spanish and Trinidadian… he was a very, very good-looking guy. It was a lovely relationship because he was living in Brixton. He introduced me to a few wild ways and partying. They all lived in these very small tenements. You see a terraced house – [there'd] be two or three families in that. They had to party all the time every weekend. 

“I was so envious of their culture because it was so clearly defined. I had a passion with him for about a year or so. It was just good fun, you know? But then I ended up marrying a local boy.”

It was the late 1960s, and Deborah’s new white fiancé, “had to ask his father's permission to go out with me because I was mixed. That was still that attitude then. We were still mistrusted.” The relationship didn't last. 

After the divorce, Deborah moved to Australia with a friend in 1977. “When you have a nasty divorce and nasty things happening, you do look for an escape. And at that time, Australia was recruiting people with particular skills. I thought it couldn’t be worse than staying here.”

“You can't run away from your problems, but you can separate for a while.” 

***

A few years later. Deborah’s new husband burst into the room: “I’ve just had a call from Somerset County Council! They want you to get in touch urgently!” To which Deborah replied: “What?”

In the mid to late 1990s, someone Deborah never knew, David Stanley, put his career at Somerset Council behind him. With hours to burn and access to the council’s records, he embarked upon a post-retirement project: find the GI babies scattered across the world and reunite them. 

Deborah was one of the last GI babies Stanley contacted. Letters started flying through Deborah’s door, not just from Stanley, but from Carol, Ann, and all her former GI Baby friends. It was euphoric.

Then David organised something special: a reunion between the children and some of the former nurses, “on a very cold miserable January. I’ll never forget it,” Deborah said. The group went back to Holnicote House together. “We went to the garden and were like kids again. It was a filthy, freezing winter day and we were running around. It was just fabulous. It was like walking into your younger self. It was like meeting a long lost relative. There was no discomfort. We just threw ourselves together. And Leon, rest in peace, confessed [to knocking me out of the window]!”

David Stanley had one more gift to give. He’d obtained each person’s birth certificate, and on Deborah’s was a name: the name of her mother. David had found her address, too. After all these years, the time had come. 

Deborah wrote to her mother and waited, her blood buzzing. For a while, no reply. To have that rush of excitement followed by silence – it was raw pain. 

But then a letter came back, written in the third person as if penned by a sister. It claimed that Deborah’s mother was not too well right now, but she would write back when feeling better. 

“Later on, I had the chance to meet her,” Deborah said.

But this meeting would have a devastating stipulation: Deborah could only meet her mother if she did not reveal her true identity.

“[My mother’s] eldest daughter was the gatekeeper of the family. And she was very cross. Let’s face it – suddenly, her whole knowledge of her mother had been confronted, her mother wasn’t who she thought she was. She was cross with me – I’d ‘introduced a blemish’ to her family. There was a bit of racism there.”

Deborah’s mother was old and the daughters didn’t want the appearance of a long-lost daughter to cause her any stress. So goes their logic, anyway. After some careful, tip-toeing conversations, they agreed to let Deborah, now in her fifties, to meet her mother. Begrudgingly, Deborah agreed. “How can you not meet your mother?” 

***

Deborah walked in, pretending to be her half-sister’s friend from Australia. Her mother took one look at her and said, you look familiar. She cannot have known for sure, but under the half-sisters’ restrictions, Deborah felt, yes, my mother and I were reunited and, yes, we both knew it to be true. 

Conversations started. Running through Deborah’s mind: “I want to tell her who I am! All the time, I wanted to tell her who I am…”

Deborah did ask one “naughty” question, as she described it. Turning to her mother, she said: “So how many daughters have you got?” Her mother quickly snapped back: “Three”. Deborah stared intently. 

Later, something distracted the older sister, taking her out of the room, providing Deborah a few seconds alone with her mother. This was her chance.

She leaned in, gave her a kiss, and said, “Goodbye, Mum”. The old woman looked back… and did not reply. “She just looked at me.” 

“We couldn’t develop a relationship, it was far too late for that. But I hope I gave her that peace… She knew who I was.”

***

Looking back at that meeting, Deborah’s main emotion was one of pity. “Really and truly, she had no other choice. She must have had years of regret. I know that feeling. I don’t believe she just breezed off and forgot about me. I don’t believe that for one minute.” 

At the very least, Deborah was able to learn her mother’s story – and why she had been placed into Holnicote: in 1943, Deborah’s mother was a teacher living in South West England. Her husband, who served in the navy, had been killed in a torpedo raid, leaving her alone to take care of their two children. She was a respected member in the village, and then she met an American GI, Deborah’s father. “She most probably met him at a local dance.”

“Our mother's liaison with my father, it wasn't illegal. She was widowed but it was very much frowned upon. [There were] a lot of political restraints on their liaison with these black guys,” Deborah said. “She was a reasonably important figure in her local community and the disgrace or shame of [having me] would have been quite difficult for her to deal with.” 

To avoid this, the local vicar took her mother in to hide her pregnancy. “I don't know if she volunteered or if it was taken out of [her] hands that I would be placed in Holnicote House. I should imagine she was relieved [to give me up].” It’s true that women in relationships with black GIs “generally faced a barrage of criticism. By October 1943 the Home Intelligence Unit was noting some people’s rising concern about "the growing number of illegitimate babies, many of coloured men”.

“That’s how it’s written: It’s in the mother’s best interests so they can carry on with their lives and reconcile with their families,” Deborah said. “Our African American fathers probably didn't even know we existed. So there was no question that my mother [wouldn’t] keep me.” 

“The knowledge of who my father was died with her,” Deborah said, her chest sinking, her face looking at the floor. “He's unlikely to be alive. But it's just to have that identity. Because that piece of you is missing. ‘Cause when I'm talking to the grandchildren, What about your father? Why don't you know where he is? I said, ‘Well, that information was lost because I didn't have a name.’” 

And what of the letter she had received? The one saying her mother was too unwell to reply? “Years later,” Deborah said, “I verified that [the letter] was my mother’s handwriting. So I’m happy she got my letter and knew how I turned out.”

***

Over the past few years, Deborah has been using ancestry websites to track down her long-lost family members with wolfish verve. The websites have allowed this former nurse to put on a deerstalker and turn detective. 

When we first spoke in February 2021, Deborah felt she was getting closer to uncovering the mystery of who her father was. “One person is the image of my son. They have the same face,” Deborah said, her eyes opening wide. 

“I never found out who my father was, but I’m getting close.” Doing so is a long process. It’s only possible to find people as they’re added to a central database. It’s an opportunity to strike gold. But, on the flipside, the necessary family may never sign up to the service and Deborah might not get the match she needs. It’s a bit like pulling the lever of a Las Vegas slot machine, but instead of hoping for three cherries in a row, you’re hoping the right DNA comes up.

“You get all these hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of six and fifth cousins. I've got a second cousin that's come up, which means we share the same grandparents. But I've had no response from her.”

Then, in 2023, Deborah had a breakthrough. We kept in touch over email in the years since our first conversation, and she mentioned that a new profile for a first cousin, called Trannie, had popped up. Deborah tried reaching out, but Trannie didn’t respond. I felt compelled to help, spending time researching before catching a morsel: Trannie’s phone number. “Oh gosh Lucas, this is wonderful, how on earth did you find Trannie's contact details, needless to say I shall pursue this lead!” Deborah wrote. “I am just thrilled.” 

A week later, Deborah sent a note: “I phoned the number and spoke to a woman who was obviously surprised and hesitant to give any information”.

Ten days later, Deborah tried again: “I called Trannie but this time whoever answered was quite cautious, saying that Trannie wasn't there, yet she sounded like the person who answered my first call…”

A few days later a boulder fell on her hopes, squashing them into the mud. “Regarding Trannie, I'm not terribly confident that she will call”. A month later: “I did send a text message but again no response.” Ten days later: “I must pluck up courage to call her again.”

Finally: “I have not heard from Trannie, only her answering machine, I don't feel like calling again”. The end of the road had revealed its vulgar face.

***

Six months passed, when an organisation called GI Trace, led by a brilliant researcher named Sally Vincent, found a prime rib: Chandra. She was Deborah’s second cousin.

Deborah picked up the phone and punched in the numbers.

It rang.

And rang.

And rang again.

Until Chandra picked up.

A great white shark can explode into top speed with five swipes of their tails, and in five minutes, Deborah had reached the end of a long road. “Chandra was delighted and very excited about our relationship which she had no doubts about when she saw the photo that I sent her of me at Holnicote nursery and a more recent one,” Deborah said. 

“We think my father was the eldest brother of Trannie, Sammie Lewis, who did serve in the military during WWII. I was very touched when Chandra phoned me unexpectedly as she had been out of touch for several weeks. and as it turned out this was because of a tragic death in the family. To emphasise her interest in me, Chandra wants to invite me to her wedding [next year], to meet the family!”

A feeling soared in her chest. At last, a way to keep loved ones near. “As you can understand,” Deborah wrote, “it felt wonderful to be recognised as belonging to a family.”

***

It is estimated that approximately 2,000 GI babies were born in Britain during the war. Nearly all of them were “illegitimate”, often lacking a home to go to, or a family to take care of them. Some were lucky, finding and forging relationships with their long-lost family. Others less so.

These events are in living memory, yet the climate these children were born into was brutal, perhaps unrecognisable: the then Home Secretary, Herbert Morrison, “was anxious that ‘the procreation of half-caste children’ would create ‘a difficult social problem”. It was as if our own government was aligning itself with the thoughts of segregation – the very ideals it was supposed to be fighting against. And it did so despite Britain sending hundreds of thousands of black, asian and people of mixed backgrounds into battle on its behalf.