Cornwall GI baby on tracking down his dad and meeting his saviour

During his teenage years, Tim Lobb felt “alone in the world” after discovering he was adopted. That all changed when he tracked down his father in the United States and the pair formed a connection.

“It was a really big shock,” said Tim Lobb, now 79, as he recalled the moment he learned the truth about his birth parents.

He was 17 years old when he found out the woman he had known as his aunt was actually his mother, while his father was an American GI who lived in West Virginia.

“You could have knocked me over with a feather back then,” he said. “Suddenly I couldn’t relate to anybody at all. I thought ‘I’m in the world on my own’.

“No question about it, it disturbed me for years and years until I built up the courage to trace my Dad… thank God I did because it was the best thing I did.”

The first American soldiers landed on British shores in 1942 as they joined the Allies during World War Two.

Many of the soldiers, known as GIs, arrived in the south-west of England to carry out military exercises for the D-Day landings.

Nobody knows exactly how many babies were fathered by American soldiers based in Britain, but it is estimated to be in the thousands.

Mr Lobb’s father, Marshall Darius Donohew, met his mother Emily Endean in a military hospital in Yeovil, Somerset, after the soldier suffered frostbite in the Battle of the Bulge, a German counter-offensive in the Ardennes region of Belgium and Luxembourg.

“I’m a net result of their meeting in Yeovil,” said Mr Lobb, who lives in Grampound, Cornwall.

After the death of his adopted mother, Mr Lobb said he had found a letter in her belongings from his father that she had kept but never shared.

In the letter, he said his father had explained how he wanted his son to come to America.

“I knew from seeing that letter much later on that I was wanted,” he said.

Mr Lobb said he had hired a private detective and after he obtained a phone number for his father, the pair had spoken regularly.

He travelled to West Virginia in 1989 and, after that initial visit, he then took his family to visit his father at least twice a year.

They enjoyed “a wonderful few years together” before his father’s death.

Among the stories Mr Donohew shared with his son was how his company had been pinned down during the Battle of the Bulge but survived.

After his father’s death in 2002, Mr Lobb said he had been going through his father’s emorabilia when he began to learn about Melvin Biddle.

It was then that he discovered Mr Donohew had owed his life to Mr Biddle.

He was awarded the Medal of Honour, the United States Armed Forces’ highest military decoration, for his heroics in overcoming German forces in the Bulge.

In his citation, Mr Biddle was acknowledged for “superb daring” in breaking the enemy grasp on the encircled town of Hotton.

Mr Lobb said his father lived thanks to Mr Biddle’s courage.

“If only he knew Biddle was his saviour,” he said.

Mr Lobb set out to find Mr Biddle and eventually the pair corresponded and met in his home state of Indiana, where they shared stories and exchanged memorabilia.

He said the meeting was one his father would have loved to have been at.

“What a reunion that would have been,” he said. “Dad would have been so grateful that he and the rest of his company was freed up by Biddle. He would have hugged him to death.”

While only knowing his father for a little over a decade, Mr Lobb said he had been left with “so many memories”.

“He was a great guy,” he said. “My sons have changed their name to his name – that makes me so proud.”

He said he had felt privileged to have formed a connection with his father before he died, adding: “I’m so, so lucky that I did.”