A pensioner wants to fulfill a death bed promise to find his long-lost younger sister who was given up for adoption during the Second World War.

Alan Roy Gray pledged to his mother Edith Audrey Smith that he would try to find his sister Rosemary.

Edith, who died aged 80 in 1997, wanted him to explain to Rosemary why she had been put up for adoption.

“I made a promise to my mother that I would try to find her,” said Alan, 81, who lives in Alford, Lincolnshire.

“I have been looking off and on for the past 24 years but I’ve never managed to find her. I even approached an adoption charity but they wanted £4,000 to help find her.”

His mother later married an RAF pilot, Les Smith, and changed her married name.

Rosemary, who was born on March 13, 1941 in Louth, Lincolnshire, was later adopted by a Leicestershire solicitor and his wife.

The couple, Mr and Mrs Southgate, are believed to have later moved to Mere in Wiltshire.

It is likely that Rosemary would have grown up and gone to school in Mere. If she is still alive, she would now be aged 80.

Mr Gray is not sure but believes his sister may also have worked as a solicitor like her adopted father.

A family tragedy lies behind the adoption. He said: “My father was reported missing presumed dead early in the Second World War and my mother fell pregnant by a Royal Navy sailor who lived just four doors away in Alexandra Road, Skegness.”

That sailor was Joe Allenby, who died when the destroyer HMS Acheron was sunk in December 1940 after hitting a mine off the Isle of Wight.

“My mother later received a letter from the War Office saying my father was still alive and in a prisoner of war camp in Poland.”

Mr Gray, who joined the Royal Navy at the age of 16, served as a stoker, including on HMS Belfast, now moored as a museum ship on the River Thames in London and run by the Imperial War Museum

.

Mr Gray now lives in Alford with his partner Christina Dolan, 53, after having retired aged 78 from the roofing firm now run by his son Paul Gray.

He has four children and 13 grandchildren and, he says, didn’t meet his father Roy until he was 21 after his parents divorced.

Mr Gray also has a youngster sister, Elaine, who married a GP and emigrated with him to Canada.

Anyone with information is asked to contact him by calling 01507 499151, or by emailing christinajoyce68@gmail.com.