George was born in 1934. He attended the school at Berkhamsted from 1939 to 1949, and after a brief spell apprenticed to an undertaker, joined the Royal Marines. On leaving the marines, he worked a variety of jobs, and met his wife Valerie in Cambridge while working as a shop-fitter. Sadly, after forty years of marriage, Valerie died, but left him with three children, and he now has seven grandchildren and one great-grandchild. He currently lives in France, but sees his children when they visit or when he visits the UK.
Early Life
‘I was given up… by my birth family when I was six months old and I suspect taken into care by the Foundling Hospital… and they found me foster parents who lived in Essex, North Essex, near Saffron Waldron. They were loving people, gentle, farm workers, you know, very poor and I suspect, in later life I’ve come to realise that it was financially beneficial to them to take us in because they got a small amount of money, I don’t suppose a huge amount, but it must have helped their wages because they didn’t earn very much. In fact my foster mother I don’t think ever worked, she was a home-maker, and she relied on our foster father’s agricultural wage, which I don’t suppose was ever more than 30 shillings a week. They lived in a… a tide cottage, belonging to the farmer where they’d paid a small, nominal rent. Yes, they were loving people. The foster father wasn’t he was a bit of the old school you know, discipline in the army and all that sort of stuff he was diff– but he– they were loving, yeah they really were, you know, and she was a– an earth mother really, you know, she’d wrap you in her arms, you know, and that was wonderful, you know, she was a lovely person.’
Into the World
‘There just- there was a few things that the foundation could have done better, you know. I mean, one thing that peeved me in later life was when I went to– I wanted to go on holiday abroad, and I didn’t have a birth certificate because they never issued us with a birth certificate, and I went to Somerset House- by this time I knew my mother’s maiden name was, and I went to Somerset house to find out, you know, about it and I wasn’t on the shelves, and they said they’ve got everybody in there from- I think they keep them from over a hundred years, all the records…. and eventually I went to the desk and I said “Look, I’m… I’m looking for, you know, my- well I want a birth certificate” I said, “But I’ve been trying to find my mother’s name and my date of birth and you haven’t got it in the records.” And eventually they said “Well where- where do you come from?” I said, “Well I was brought up by the Foundling Hospital.” “Ah,” they said, “we keep those in a different place.” And they went off around the back and about half an hour later they came back with the- little form, just said “George Huxley, Boy, 21.3.34. Born in Stafford” and then I thought, “This is something. I’ve joined the marines, so I could go and fight and been able to join the marines in ten days with no questions asked… And travelled the world with them, and yet when I wanted a passport to go abroad to go on holiday I haven’t got a birth certificate.” And I thought well this was, you know, one of the things they could have done better for us.’
Reflections
‘After… many years I began to realise that what had happened to me was beneficial, you know, the type of upbringing it was that- you know, that I’ve began to feel that I was lucky and blessed for being chosen to go there, in a way… The greatest thing was- from the school, that point of view, was it taught us to get on with people, you know, because you’re all stuck together hugger-mugger and, you know, you just have to get on with each other as best you can, don’t you, if you’re in that close proximity and so, you know, that helps in later life, to be able to get on with people, yeah.’
School Life
‘My life didn’t seem to get any better and so I ran away from School. I escaped and we’d made a… a slight scrape under the fence that went right round the School, you know, that we could slither under, and I escaped and… I remember- it must have been about… the Americans were in- during the War- it was during the War and the Americans were already over here because they had a big Air Force base near Berkhamsted, Bovington it was a fligh- flew- flying fortresses they had up there. And so it must have been 1942 and I remember wandering about in the woods and things and I came against an AK-AK battery that protected the airfield and it was women who were in the army, you know, manning the AK-AK guns. Anyway they took me under their wing and kept me there for a day, fed me and you know, I thought this was wonderful, you know, making a fuss of me, you know, so I didn’t bother to go back and I was away two and a half days and they didn’t know where I was and they’d sent… obviously the local police and what have you out to search for me. Anyway I turned up on my own, you know, because these women in the army, they told me I, you know, I’d better go back where I came from. They knew I came from somewhere because I was in uniform, you know the School uniform. Anyway I came back and it was the only misdemeanour I committed that I never got punished for. I suspect they were worried.’
Search for Birth Families
‘I suspect I must have been 12 or so when I started to think, you know, in fact the first time that I really knew about anything was when I went home on my first school holiday after the- being at school, you know, all during the war, that my foster mother got us both together and told us, she said, ‘Now you know I’m not your real mother,’ and I remember bursting into tears and so did my sister you know, burst into tears.‘
