A BROMSGROVE woman who was a GI bride during the Second World War came back to retrace her roots, nearly 60 years after emigrating to the USA.
Jean Sellars, aged 81, originally from Broad Street, Sidemoor, moved to Falmouth, Kentucky, in 1946, after marrying Raymond Sellars, an American soldier based at the All Saints Hospital US soldiers' camp.
She recently returned home, with friend Charlene Oliver, for only the second time, to visit her two sisters Margaret Bartlett and Mary Crawford.
But Jean believes Bromsgrove has changed enormously from the town she left aged just 22-years-old.
"It's just not the same," she said.
"Everything is so different, I remember it being all the little shops, but its been 59 years, so things are going to have changed."
Despite the changes, however, Jean will always hold personal memories here.
Her parents, Mr and Mrs Jaynes, and her son Morris Raymond Sellars, who lived for just 12 hours, are buried at the town's St John's Church.
Soon after marrying Jean at All Saints Church in 1944, husband Raymond was called over to Japan.
Midway through his journey the war ended, and he was directed back to his home in Kentucky.
On joining him, Jean helped him to run a tobacco farm, before Raymond passed away in 1988, aged 78.
The environment Jean arrived in was a very quiet one, compared to the struggle of war-time Britain.
"Until the war was over, I worked in one of the ammunition factories," she explains.
"I nearly lost one of my hands in one of the machines.
"Also on another occasion, me and my sister had just done the garden all nice, then the sirens went off.
"We came back out and the garden had been destroyed.
"I got so mad at that German plane!
"When I arrived in Kentucky, even though people were affected, everything had really quietened down."
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