2:00pm Tuesday 9th March 2010
By Dan Goater
A WEYMOUTH man who was illegally deported to Africa at the age of 10 has told the remarkable story of how he returned to Britain.
Alistair Marshall, known to his friends as Sandy, was forced to migrate from his home in Castle Douglas, Scotland, in 1946.
Mr Marshall, who now lives in Buxton Road, said he was one of a group of children illegally deported by the British Government to the former Rhodesia.
The 74-year-old is among the thousands of people who have now received an email from the Government formally apologising for his treatment after he became estranged from his family.
He said: “I was made to think that I was going on holiday at first.
“I was taken from Scotland to London on a train, given nice clothes and put up in a hostel for a few nights before I was put on a ship and sent off to Rhodesia.”
Mr Marshall said he had no idea why he was separated from his family.
He said: “I was sent to live with my aunt for some reason but there were 13 girls and women in the house and I think that I simply didn’t fit in.
“I was never put in care but all I know is that one night I woken up, put on a train and then a boat to Africa.
“I was led to believe my mother was dead but I found out she was alive in 1966. I went to see her but she wanted nothing to do with me.
“I also only saw my father once when he came home on leave during the war. I was always made to feel that I was the one who has done something wrong. But I was only 10 years old.”
Mr Marshall said he was the first in his group of 18 children to set foot in the town of Fairbridge in Rhodesia.
He said: “I will never forget the night I saw the people who took me out there build a huge fire to burn all of our immigration paperwork on the orders of the British Government.”
Mr Marshall said his first four years in Fairbridge were spent in school before he was sent to work on the Rhodesian rail network, in mines, farming and working in a factory.
Mr Marshall eventually fled the country aged 19, hitchhiking to Cape Town, where he joined a Merchant Navy ship and set sail for Southampton.
He said: “I arrived in England in January 1956. I ended up in hospital a few days after that, suffering from pleurisy, malaria and pneumonia.”
Mr Marshall said he later took a train to Edinburgh to be reunited with his family but was ‘shunned’ by them for reasons he still cannot understand.
After leaving Edinburgh, Mr Marshall married and lived in Peterborough and Blackpool before moving to Weymouth.
He said: “The way the Government did things wasn’t right. I was one of the lucky ones. Some were never able to leave because their paperwork was lost.”
Mr Marshall said he has since been invited to go to reunions with fellow migrants abroad but has not been able to afford to make the journeys.
Photos of Mr Marshall have shown him at work in Rhodesia. One was used on the front cover of the book Windows, Rhodesia Fairbridge Memorial College Autobiographies.
Mr Marshall is now trying to confirm his status as a child migrant and get help to attend future reunions through the Child Migrants Trust.
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