MACCLESFIELD  EXPRESS – Wednesday, September 9, 2009
WW-II 70TH  ANNIVERSARY
  

My father was a soldier buried in a Macclesfield grave

By Rhiannon McDowall

A Dutchman’s hunt for his long lost father has brought him 500 miles across Europe to Macclesfield.

Klaus Volkmann , 61 discovered he was the result of a whirlwind romance between his German mother, Gertrude and  British soldier Alan Dunbar, after deciding to trace his paternity.
His mother always refused to speak to him about his father, but following her death he embarked on a 13-year search, culminating in a visit to his father’s ashes in Macclesfield Cemetery .
Grandfather-of-three Klaus, a physics technician, said: “I never thought my father could be British, and certainly not a soldier, because I was born after the war, in 1947”.
”I couldn’t believe it when I found out. It made me very proud to think that my father was a British soldier”.

Klaus’ aunt admitted his mother had a relationship with a soldier an subsequent research into a German Youth Protection Bureau , a register of all babies born following the war revealed the name Alan Dunbar of Manchester .
Alan was deployed to northern Germany in 1945 to help rebuild Germany and provide humanitarian assistance.
Father-of-two sons Klaus explained: “He was staying in a rental house 150 metres from where my mother was living, and she and her sister worked in the kitchen. Well, that explains it !

”They became involved, but than my father was deployed back to England before I was born.”
After ringing all Dunbars in Germany and in Holland phonebooks, in Holland Klaus stumbled upon his cousin Glen Dunbar, who told him Alan had died aged 84, just two years earlier.
He said: “I felt a little bit sad because I had been searching for all this time and if I had found him earlier I could have met him.”

Klaus was able to meet with Alan’s sisters May and Muriel and brother Blair. They took me to Macclesfield.

He said: “I was very, very nervous. We went to a little room and they opened the Book of Remembrance for me”.
”I saw my father’s name there on the page and I felt very emotional. From that moment I had finished my job. I will never forget Macclesfield – it’s a beautifull place and I have beautifull memories !”

Alan,  who worked as a welder-constructor, never married. He lived in Cheshire following the war and died in may 2005 in his Winsford home.

Klaus is now keen to learn more about his father’s militairy career and would ask anyone who recognises his father (left on the picture) or his companion (r) to contact him on  

        

kvolkmann@ziggo.nl