DNA kit said my dad was a G.I. from Seattle not a labourer from Hull
HUNT SHOWS PAST SECRET
everything you knew. My feelings were all over the place.
“But meeting my American family was overwhelming. Myheritage had arranged cameras, it was quite a moment.
“As I went down the escalator to meet them all, I thought, ‘Woah’. But it was a fantastic meeting.”
Graham, who spent 22 years in the Army himself, was filled with pride when he was told his dad was a D-day veteran. Harry was one of thousands of US soldiers who landed on the beaches of Normandy on June 6 – and saw dozens of his comrades shot before his eyes. Codenamed Operation Overlord, the largest seaborne invasion in history helped turn the tide of the Second World War and allowed the allies to advance into western Europe.
By the time Graham was born in the November of that year Harry, then aged 29, had pushed into Germany – with no inkling he had a son in England.
The dad of five, who died of bowel cancer aged 65 in 1980, never got over what he’d seen on the French beaches.
Graham said: “My siblings say he remembered the horrific situation many of our soldiers went through on D-day – getting off the beach, having friends shot on landing, or while just getting off the landing craft.
“Like many of the guys, he suffered with that memory for the rest of his life. I feel very proud of him. It was quite a poignant moment when we went to the military cemetery where he is buried.
“There are lots of similarities between us as we both spent years in the military. He was in the American engineers and I was in the British engineers. I feel sad that I didn’t get to meet my dad.
“When you find out things like this, there are all sorts of questions you want to ask.
He didn’t know that I existed – the family say if he did know, he would have come back. Luckily, I can speak to my brothers and sisters.”
Harry returned to the States when the war ended in 1945 and married shortly afterwards, before having Kitty and her siblings Marsha, 73, Harry, 71, Sharon, 64, and Michael, 59.
All of his children have marvelled at how much Graham looks like their late dad.
When Graham probed his own family about the secret, they confirmed their labourer dad Arthur spent three years in Myanmar, then known as Burma, during the war.
Arthur was posted in the country fighting the Japanese at the time Graham was conceived – meaning he could not have been his biological dad.
Graham said: “I knew he’d served in the war – I’ve got his medals – but I didn’t give the dates any thought.
“He was scarred as well when he came home. I don’t want to forget that.
“I asked my siblings, ‘Didn’t you even think to tell me?’ They said: ‘What was the point? You were our brother and you were part of the family’.
“I could understand that in a way. We are a typical northern family where no one wears their heart on their sleeve.
“I think they thought if it wasn’t interfering with anything, there was no need to tell me.
“I still have the greatest admiration and love for the man who brought me up. He was the one who went out to work and put food on the table.”
And Graham says he can’t resent Elizabeth, who died in the early 80s, for not telling him the truth about his dad when she was alive.
He said: “She was like many women at that time – she didn’t know if her husband was dead or alive. I can’t bear any malice towards her because times were different and I didn’t live then.”
Meeting my American family was overwhelming, just fantastic
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