Paul McCue Books

Born 24 July 1921 at Lumley View, Newfield, County Durham, George Demand was the son of Ann (Annie) Young, a local girl from Pelton Fell, and René C.M. Demand, a Belgian soldier who had been wounded during the First World War. René Demand had come to live in the area as part of a Belgian community of former soldiers and refugees that found work at a local munitions factory during the First World War. Choosing not to return to Belgium after the Armistice, he became a pipefitter at a coal mine.......

In 1931 Demand left Roseberry when his family moved to Brussels and after finishing his schooling in Belgium, he worked there as a mechanic. According to Hugh Dormer (see below) Demand served for a year in the Belgian Army from 1939 until the country’s occupation by the Germans in 1940. In 1941 he decided to make his way to Britain and did so, leaving his family behind in Belgium, via Marseilles in France where he was helped by the escape organisation of the Reverend Donald Caskie. Passed on over the Pyrenées, Demand reached neutral Spain, but was arrested and interned for some time, firstly in the Castillo de San Fernando fortress at Figueras and then in the Miranda de Ebro camp. He subsequently managed to make contact with the British authorities in Spain who secured his release and he was sent on to Gibraltar from where, in August 1941, he sailed for Britain..........[Remainder of case study is complete - contact author for further details].

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