"I am absolutely shattered by the way I have been treated," Teresa Galvin told the Daily Mail. "I went to France to see my son and had a lovely holiday but I didn't expect to come back to this."

Galvin said she told the post office before she left that she would be out of the country for two months. Her sons are helping her out until her pension checks start coming, but she said they are both retired themselves and have little to spare, the London newspaper said.

The Department of Work and Pensions said Galvin should have given them official notice of her trip.

Galvin lives in Suffolk with one son, Patrick. The other, Michael, lives in Bordeaux.

Her husband, an army major, died in 1952.