The Box: A Wartime Gift by Norma McCloud – Sad tale of wartime affair, a wooden toy box and a family secret hidden for 40 years

A fascinating wartime tale of a secret affair and a mysterious wooden toy box has been written by a Sawbridgeworth woman, based on her own real-life experiences.

Norma McCloud, 79, who writes as NJC McCloud, has lifted the lid on a long-held family secret in her book, The Box: A Wartime Gift.

It centres around her discovery at the age of 40 that her birth father was, in fact, an American GI who had returned from serving in France during the Second World War to the UK, where he met her mother.

Norma was born after the war, believing that her stepfather was her real dad, and during that time grew up with a handcrafted wooden toy box.

After the revelation years later about her birth father, she began a seven-year search to find him.

Eventually she flew out to California to meet him for the first time, when he was in his 70s, where he asked her about the box.

“The book starts off where I eventually find out about the box’s origin and my birth father, who asks me if I remember a box,” said Norma.

“It hit me like a sledgehammer when he said ‘Do you remember the box?’ All those years I’d had this toy box growing up. It was a very odd type of box – my mother insisted that everywhere I went, the box went with me.

“I never knew it was from him and it was the only thing I had from him, so I felt the need to write this story.

“I remember playing with it. My mother had painted the lid green and given me some little metal animals, so it became my little farmyard. The box was later used as storage.”

Sadly, Norma burned the box, when it became riddled with woodworm, before the truth about her birth father had been revealed – something she regrets to this day.

“The reason I wrote the book is that it’s just so sad that I actually burned it on a bonfire, devastating really, and I felt I should write this story,” she said.

“During the war, my mother was already married, and the man I thought was my father and is on my birth certificate was reported missing about the time my birth father met my mother.

“My stepfather came back from a prisoner of war camp in Singapore about three months after my birth, father had gone back to America, and when my mum found out she was expecting, the doctor suggested she say I was a premature birth.

“I remember him finding out when I was about five. He treated me very badly, he was a very cold man, and I always wondered what was wrong with me.

“When my birth father returned to America, my mother never heard from him again, but I since discovered that my grandmother had stopped the letters from him.

“He wrote to her, but, of course, she never responded – both thought neither wanted to be in touch. He had always known about me.

“This sort of story used to happen all the time back then. I think my grandmother and his mother must have written to each other. My mother passed away in 1988 and I met my birth father in 1993.”

Norma spent two weeks in California with him and discovered she also had a half-sister and two half-brothers. She still keeps in contact with her family out there.

Having moved from Enfield to Sawbridgeworth five years ago, Norma is a retired lecturer who worked for many years with troubled children. She divorced her late husband and has two adopted children, a son and a daughter.

Norma’s book is available on Amazon and from book retailers.