Couple haunted by plight of jilted woman at Waverley

Waverley Station as it was when the Lloyds arrived in Edinburgh

But the fate of a young woman they met that day in 1946 on the Flying Scotsman has troubled them ever since.

Now, both aged 90, they have embarked on an attempt to find out what became of the young Dutch girl they left at the Displaced Persons Office at Waverley Station after she was stood up by her “soldier boy”.

Mr Lloyd, a retired train driver, lives with his wife in Stratford upon Avon, Warwickshire.

The couple, who raised five sons, say they never forgot the young Dutch woman who shared their carriage on 24  August in the year after the Second World War ended, and hope to track her or her family down.

Mr Lloyd said: “We fondly recall our honeymoon journey to Edinburgh from [London] King’s Cross, but we also can’t forget a young Dutch girl who was in her mid 20s.

“She joined us in our carriage and was hoping to meet a soldier at Waverley Station.

“I remember being very upset when I saw a guard take all the money she had. I realised the young lady wasn’t British and I gave up my seat so she could speak to my wife.

“I think we were about the same age. She gave my wife a little ring that she still has. The young lady was in Holland for the occupation, so I was very interested in what she had to say.

“She was going to meet a Scottish military man, but sadly he was not there when we arrived.”

Mr Lloyd took the woman to the Displaced Persons Office, which was still operating a year after the war ended. There, he passed her into the care of another man without taking a note of her name.

Mr Lloyd said: “I regret very much not getting any contact information for the woman.

“My wife and I went to Edinburgh again for our 50th wedding anniversary and we thought about her again and where she might be.

“I’m so sorry I didn’t follow things up before, but so much has happened to us bringing up our children. We just want to know what happened to her, whether she met her soldier boy, if she married him and had children who might still be in Edinburgh.”

Mr Lloyd’s friend, 53-year-old Fraser Pithie, has made some tentative attempts to track down the woman through the National Archives, but said it had been a struggle.

He added: “I have tried to find out information on the Displaced Persons Office, but it’s virtually impossible. As for registers, one can’t seem to find any of these.”

Asked why the couple were keen to trace the woman now, he said: “I think it’s because they had just got married and here was this girl trying to go and meet her own sweetheart. They felt her disappointment.”

Mr Pithie said the celebration of the couple’s diamond wedding anniversary had also helped bring back memories of the young woman who was fleeing her war-ravaged country.

The Dutch had lived under occupation following the German invasion in May 1940, despite initial attempts to remain neutral.

The country was controlled by a German civilian governor and a policy of “enforced conformity” saw all non-Nazi organisation banned.

The era was famously chronicled in The Diary of a Young Girl, by Anne Frank before her death in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp aged just 15.