British Children Seek GI Fathers 50 Years Later : World War II: Dreams of being reunited are often shattered--but sometimes fulfilled by happy meetings.

Linda Beddard and her American father, Bob Farnum, have long telephone conversations every Wednesday. Farnum, who was stationed in Britain during World War II, writes his long-lost daughter four letters a week.

The former Army Air Corps mechanic, now 71, last saw her 46 years ago through the chain-link fence of an English army base as he went off to war in France.

They were reunited in July. Beddard, 47, tracked Farnum down through U.S. military records and visited him in Danville, Ill.

“He kept holding my hand, putting his arm around me,” she said in an interview.

“I was introduced to everyone--everyone who would listen, anyway--in stores, on the street. The English in me wanted to crawl under a stone and the American in me thought, this is wonderful.”

Farnum had a wife in the United States and never returned for his daughter. Beddard, whose mother died in 1966, said Farnum’s wife was nice to her during the visit.

One million GIs served in Britain during World War II and about 70,000 married local women. No one knows how many children were conceived in wartime love affairs, but Pamela Winfield, founder of Transatlantic Children’s Enterprise, estimates more than 20,000.

Her organization, known as TRACE, has found 184 fathers. War Babes, started by Shirley McGlade, has located 120.

Getting through the bureaucratic maze was made easier in November by the settlement of a lawsuit War Babes brought against the U.S. government over privacy regulations. It entitles those searching for their fathers to the last known address, service number and marital status.

McGlade said some bureaucrats still delay, in what she described as a continuation of a wartime policy designed to protect the soldiers.

“Some of the women were paid 100 pounds and told to keep quiet,” she said in an interview. “You sign this form, keep the 100 pounds, but don’t try and find the man.

“I’ve heard of lots of guys who applied to get married, and then the guys are whisked off: The Army got wind of it. They did not discourage the men from fraternizing with the women, but the attitude was: Don’t bring them home.”

After a 14-year search united McGlade with her father in California, she founded War Babes.

“When you don’t know who you are, it screws you up,” she said. “I just wanted to prove that my mom loved my dad. There were stories of women lying down with soldiers for a pair of nylons. Since I’ve found my dad, I know who I am. It’s self-confidence.”

Not every search ends as happily.

Michael Bayliss’ father had died two years before his search began, but he has no regrets.

“Irrespective of what one finds, it is good for anyone’s personal satisfaction,” said Bayliss, a 46-year-old security worker.

He said the four-month search began with a letter and photograph sent to a Sgt. Snow in Myrtle Springs, Tex.

“I’d been discreet in this,” he said. “I didn’t want to come as a complete surprise to anyone. That’s why I left it so long. When they got the photograph, the resemblance was enough to convince them. They said it was like looking at a ghost.”

Leslie Evans has mixed feelings about the quest for his father, who came from Philadelphia.

“It seems he was in the military prison when my mother went to see him to say she was pregnant,” Evans said. “He laughed at her through the bars and sort of said, ‘Sod off,’ in a word.”

Evans, who works in a Birmingham wire factory, said his mother was told the sergeant faced a court-martial.

“We don’t know what he did, and that was the last she saw of him,” he said. “To find out this chap’s like this is a bit of a kick in the guts. To be quite honest, I’m a bit sort of nervous about it.

Winfield of TRACE said middle age prompts many to begin looking.

“Sometimes, at 45 years old, they are suddenly confronted that they have an American father,” She said. “At first, I have to calm them down because they are really shattered to learn they are a different person.

“It isn’t until you get older, when you become a parent yourself and realize the significance. Then they feel, ‘I’d like him to know he has grandchildren’.”

Searches go both ways. McGlade said she receives mail from Americans looking for children in Britain.

She said the best success at War Babes involved a man in Manchester who visited his father in America. When the son telephoned his mother, the former GI took the telephone and proposed to her. She accepted.