For most May 8th 1945 was a day of joy as the war in Europe came to an end. For one Newport woman it was, she says, "the worst day of my life" because it meant she had to leave the loving American family who cared for her after she was evacuated.

AS the German Air Force began to bomb British towns. American newspapers, shocked by the plight of families cowering in their air-raid shelters, appealed for people willing to take in children from the war-torn country.

The Boston Evening Transcript was one of the local papers which asked families house evacuees for the 'duration of the war' and Bridie Luis-Fuentes has them to thank for finding her haven.

In 1940, five-year-old Bridie was then living in Wanstead in Essex on the outskirts of London. German bombs rained down night after night. Although living in the south-east of England Bridie's grandparents lived in Newport. A soldier in the First World War, her grandfather had found work there after he left the army. Her mother, Emma Baldwin, was brought up in Pill and Bridie came to Newport to live after the war.

She sailed on 13th August 1940 onboard the SS Samaria with 44 other children sponsored by the Boston Evening Transcript.

The evacuation was organised by the Children's Overseas Resettlement Board. They would only arrange one more movement of children to America. The next transport they sent, the SS City of Benares was torpedoed by a U-boat as it sailed across the Atlantic and 77 children, including seven from Newport, were lost.

Bridie recalls the crossing was not without incident. "We saw the periscope of a submarine as we were sailing to America." To the children onboard it was all part of the grand adventure they had embarked upon. "We had no idea of the danger - it was just very exciting". She adds: "I don't think anyone seemed to realise just how infested the Atlantic was with U-Boats at that time."

Their convoy escort turned back half-way, as it did for the City of Benares, but the Samaria made it to New York.

The five-year-old was ready to go to her new home. "One night when the bombing started, we went down to shelter, and apparently I said 'I could certainly go to America now."

The Transcript’s photographer was there when the children stepped off the ship. It reported the evacuees' safe arrival and told how "the expressions on the face of each youngster betrayed the excitement brought by each new sight of America."

She was taken to the aptly named New England Home for Little Wanderers for two weeks while she had medicals and a suitable family was found for her.

Then she was placed with the McDonald family who lived in Newtonville, a suburb of Boston. She admits: "I couldn't have gone to a better family."

"They had two children Carol, who was seven-years-old and Bruce who was four. The family had a car and one of my first memories is of sitting in the back and Bruce turning to me and holding my hand and saying 'Let's be pals'."

"At school in Boston I was really welcomed", Bridie recalls. Term started amid the rich colours of a New England autumn. "I remember walking home scuffing leaves with a girl who became a close friend, called Jean Spencer who I still keep in touch with."

Home life too was warm and full of love. "I wanted to call my foster parents mummy and daddy, but they told me they were 'Aunt Priscilla and Uncle Roland' ".

For most people VE Day in 1945 was a day which delivered relief from six years of war. Bridie recalls it as "the worst day of my life". As it became clear her life with her adopted American family was about to come to an end she admits: "I cried for two whole days."

"I was 10 years old and the time I spent in America with the McDonalds were such important and formative years."

As she crossed the Atlantic, Japan surrendered and the world war finally came to a close, but for Bridie, amid the jubilation, there would be difficult years ahead.

Looking back she sees that her relationship with her mother and father "never really recovered".

"I was coming into difficult years as well, just before becoming a teenager." she recalls.

Her family had returned to Newport and she went to Rougemont School. "I had an American accent and my teacher corrected me all the time."

In austere post-war Britain, their now more mighty wartime allies were often criticised. "It did annoy me when people complained about the Americans; people seemed to resent them", she admits.

With 70 years passing since the end of the war and of their separation, Bruce came to visit last month.

"We've stayed in touch ever since I returned to Britain" Bridie says. "The whole experience has let me accept other cultures" she says, "and our time together has influenced both our outlooks I think. I've married a Spanish man and Bruce became something of an Anglophile, even winning a scholarship to Oxford University."

Bruce too remembers when he asked Bridie to be his pal all those years ago. “We were pales then, and we still are” he says, adding: “Our relationship today is that we love each other as brother and sister”.

"We would always refer to eachother as foster-brother and sister" Bridie explains, but in a touching recognition of how close they were, a few years ago, they both agreed to drop the 'foster' and now call eachother simply 'brother' and 'sister'.

It is a moving symbol of this most special relationship.