Sir, - I read with interest your feature (March 22nd) about Irish post war aid to Germany, which took the form of Irish families fostering German children in the late 1940s. When researching Irish postwar aid to France, I came across a similar account of young French visitors to Ireland during the same period.
The Irish Red Cross Monthly Bulletin, vol V, October 1945, mentions the arrival in Dun Laoghaire of about 100 French children. These were to be welcomed for a year by boarding schools and families throughout Ireland, in towns as widespread as Arklow, Navan, Monaghan, Kinvara, Ennis, Carrick on Shannon and Claremorris. If any of your readers has any knowledge or family memories about any of these French children, I should be very interested if they could contact me, at the address below, or c/o Department of French, University College, Dublin 4.
I should be even more interested to hear from any of your readers who might have memories or family documents relating to the main subject of my research: the Irish Red Cross hospital set up in Saint Lo in Normandy, a town, which had been virtually annihilated by Allied bombings. There was an Irish medical presence at Saint Lo from August 1945 until January 1947, when the French Red Cross took over the hospital's administration. - Yours, etc.,
Prince Edward Terrace, Blackrock,
Co Dublin.