Elsie Harman, daughter of Frank and Doris Harman was born on 22nd December 1895 at Packhams Hill and was baptised in St. Denys parish church on 4th April 1896. On 11th March 1919 she married John Joseph Coomber a leading seaman in the Royal Navy who lived at Corner Cottage in Rotherfield. His father, Walter, was dead at the time of the wedding but had been a railway signalman. Her brother Luther gave her away at the wedding.

In 1923 saw the birth of a son whom they called Herbert Walter. Just as 1923 was a joyous year for Elsie, the following one was a very sad one. Her husband John had been promoted to petty officer in 1921 and was serving away from home in H.M.S. Champion. He was taken ill early in the new year and was taken to the Royal Naval hospital at Haslar in Gosport, Hampshire. His condition didn't improve and at the beginning of June deteriorated very rapidly. He died on 19th June of pulmonary tuberculosis. His body was taken back to Rotherfield where he was buried four days later on 23rd June 1924. The events of the year were shattering for Elsie and for some time after she lived a very quiet life devoting herself to her son.

Elsie married again to an educated rotter, Harman George Bickers and, on 31st December 1930, when her son Herbert Walter was eight years old, she bore twins who were named Dora Margaret and Edward Harman. They were born at Rotherfield. When the twins were two years old the family moved to Naylor's farm at Mayfield. Four years later when the twins were six and a half years old they contracted tuberculosis from drinking unpasteurised milk. Margaret was sent to a place called Chailey Heritage craft school which was near Lewes. She remained there from 1937 until early 1940. Edward was sent somewhere else. During this period they didn't see one another at all. Elsie developed cancer at this time and so she was ill a lot of the time and could only pay a very few visits to her daughter at Chailey. Her step-brother also paid a few visits to see her.

In 1938 when he was fifteen years old, Herbert Walter joined the army as a bugler in the Royal Army Medical Corps and Harman Bickers joined the Royal Sussex Regiment. In 1940, Margaret went home and was able to meet her twin brother again. Having been apart for such a long time they had to get to know one another again. As Elsie was still ill, a lot of the time the twins spent was with various aunts and uncles. Sadly, when they were ten years old their mother Elsie died in April 1940.

The twins were fostered for a while with a couple who took in war refugees. Not long after their father took them to Tunbridge Wells where they lived together until 1945 when, without any warning, he suddenly disappeared. The police tried to trace him, but failed. And with money very short, the lady with whom they had been lodging could not afford to look after them. She informed the council of this and so the twins were uprooted once more. Not only to go to an orphanage but to be split up yet again.

During this time Herbert Walter had transferred to the Glider Pilot Regiment so did not know anything of what had befallen his stepbrother and sister until they were able to write and tell him. This time the stay in the orphanage lasted for two years. But at least the twins were able to see one another occasionally at school. Notwithstanding having to stay in an orphanage, they received shattering news one day that their step-brother had been killed in action on one of the last few days of the war. He had been shot down in a glider while crossing the Rhine. This was on 24th March 1945. He was buried in the Reichwald Forest war grave cemetery at Kleve in Germany. They felt as if the end of the world had come because they had nobody at all left they could call their own.

There was some good news for them a year or so later, when in July 1946 at the age of fifteen, a middle aged couple offered to adopt them. So the twins went to live at Minster near Ramsgate, Thanet with Charles and Elizabeth Hartwell. The Hartwell's had a small restaurant called 'The Little Ships' in Ramsgate High Street and it was here that Margaret helped out while Edward went to school at St George's school. They stayed there for about a year during which time they had found it difficult to settle down and so Edward expressed a desire to go to sea. After leaving school he worked for a few months on a large motor yacht, the Mys Sou Wester which was moored for the winter in Ramsgate harbour. Margaret also eventually left home to take up nursery nurse training at Mime Bay. There was still no news of their father and the police at Tunbridge Wells had held a warrant for his desertion for seven years.

Margaret wanted to find her father and so contacted the Salvation Army to see if they could trace him. One day she got a letter from him at Aldershot where he was working as a civilian chef at the army barracks there. She made arrangements to go up to London to see him. He was living in a converted Nissen hut at Lambeth with his third wife since he had disappeared. He was drunk for quite a lot of the twenty-four hours she was there and so left for home very unhappy at what she had seen. Since then she has never wanted to see him again.

Edward, meanwhile had spent six months at the Prince of Wales' sea training hostel near Stalham in Norfolk where he learnt the rudiments of seamanship. In August 1947 he joined his first ship - The Pacific Importer where he served as a junior ordinary seaman. On this ship he visited Malta, Alexandria, Jaffa, Tel Aviv, Haifa and Beirut and then through the Suez canal to Suez. Then down the Red Sea to Mombasa. Being re-routed the ship went on across the Indian Ocean to New Zealand. After spending his 17th birthday in Wellington, the Pacific Importer then set off across the Pacific Ocean. Up through the Panama Canal, across the Atlantic Ocean and so back to London Docks. Successive trips took him to such places as the Caribbean, Venezuela, Colombia and the west coast of America. His last voyage took him to Gibraltar, Algiers, through the Suez Canal to Aden and thence to Australia. After calling in at Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane, Port Pine, Geelong and Freemantle, it was off across the Indian Ocean. Through the Suez Canal again, through the Dardanelles and Bosphorus to Odessa, Russia in the Black Sea and back to port in England at Liverpool. While he had been at sea he had been studying for his 2nd mate's certificate through a messages course with the college of navigation at Warsash in Hampshire. But abandoned this on leaving the merchant navy.

During his calls in Australia, Edward had met several adoptive relatives and friends and decided that he wanted to emigrate there. However, during his last voyage his adoptive parents had moved to York because Charles had developed Parkinson's disease. It was suggested by Elizabeth that he chose a trade in the regular army instead of doing national service which might enable him to achieve his aim. Off he went for a medical but failed because of his childhood t.b. This meant he had to attend a national service medical which he also failed. Aspirations of Australia were fading fast.

So he had to look for work that was not easy and so periods on the dole and casual potato picking had to occupy him for several months. Then he got a job as a trainee landscape gardener with York Backhouse Nurseries with whom he was involved in laying out new gardens mainly in the Hull area. During the 1950/51 winter he felt unwell more than once and had recurring bronchitis. In April 1951 he went to work for York Corporation parks department, but almost immediately felt unwell again. After coughing up blood he had to visit the chest clinic where he was told that he had pulmonary t.b. very badly and was told that he would have to go to bed immediately and be laid up for at least eighteen months. All thoughts of Australia were now definitely doomed.

Edward has worked for the BBC for many years as an engineer and is now in the BBC technical author department at Crawly and is unmarried.

Margaret married Harold Davis on 23rd August 1952 and had two children - Anne Margaret born on 26th October 1953 and Kevin Edward born on 26th July 1957. Both children are now married - Anne to John Hallett and they have three children - Carl Michael who was born on 9th September 1973, Nigel Adam on 28th June 1979 and Gareth William on 4th December 1980. Kevin was married to Shaun Sullivan on 27th July 1975.

Was anything else ever heard of Harman George Bickers the twins' father? Although still surrounded in mystery, there are some further details. In September 1950 an inquest was held by the Poplar, London coroner who recorded a verdict that Harman George Bickers, 59, a clerk, died from asphyxia due to drowning, having killed himself while the balance of his mind was disturbed. However in a newspaper report of 11th January. 1951, a Detective Constable Drury told the coroner that he was certain that the man presumed to be Harman George Bickers was, in fact, still alive and had been confirmed by fingerprints made at Scotland Yard. He also added that Bicker's wife, Mrs. Florence Ann Bickers, had told a magistrate a few days earlier on 5th January, that she had seen her husband. He had left her in 1949 after marrying her at Brixton in 1946. The detective added that Bickers was living at Aldershot in Hampshire. At the original inquest Bicker's address had been given as Camellia street, London S.W. Because of the new situation, the coroner ordered that the papers referring to the death of Harman George Bickers be changed to read that it was the body of an unknown man. The events from 1943 when Harman George bickers deserted his children are certainly shrouded in mystery - a mystery which perhaps may never be solved.