SIR,

This letter should have been written decades ago, perhaps, as it refers to Sedbury Park Hotel in Chepstow from September to December 1939, whe there could be someone still alive in Chepstow who knew or worked at the hotel then.

In the August of 1939, my mother took my older sister of 11 years and myself, aged nine, to have a holiday there, but war was declared during our stay so we remained there for a further four months because our home area was Fleet, near Aldershot, which was deemed the third line of defence then and was bristling with anti-invasion constructions.

Those months were incredibly happy and full for us children, with riding, tennis, swimming and the freedom of a super environment.

Soon after the start of the war, a bunch of Dutch children, possibly 15, arrived with two carers, but they lived in the new wing of the hotel and had separate meals and lessons, only being free to play with us late afternoons.

As my sister and myself spoke a little German, having had a German governess for four years, we could all make ourselves understood as a bunch of mixed sexes playing hide and seek all around the place.

Sadly, the owners of the hotel, the Talbots, put areas out of bounds as we damaged the fir bushes, kept touching the sensitive plants in the greenhouse (one plant ate flies for fun) and shutting each other in the slaughter house in the stable yard.

They were not allowed to learn to ride or to play tennis, oddly.

It was not until after we had left that my mother told us they were Jewish children who had been saved from occupied Holland, but without their parents.

What happened to them and did they stay there until the end of the war?

My sister and myself had great crushes on two young men who worked in the hotel – Richard, a waiter, and Leonard the hall porter.

They were great to us, always joking and getting us little treats from the kitchen.

They never stopped singing or humming 'Red Sails in the Sunset', the number one tune then, I presume.

I see their faces as soon as that tune is played.

Richard's mother wrote to mine in 1940 to say he had been killed in the army.

What happened to Leonard? Do they still have families living in Chepstow who remember them as uncles or cousins etc?

I do love old photographs but have none of the Dutch children who may have ultimately gone to the local school.

Can anyone fill the 70-year gap?

Susan Fawcett-Gandy (Brecon)