My sister Jennifer, when visiting Uncle Jack’s grave in Lille, once described the man as the ‘Shadow in the Corner’: someone we were always aware of while growing up. We were told stories about him, we leafed through his little blue felt-covered logbook, we looked at fading black and white photographs of a young man in uniform and on Anzac Day, we pinned medals on the right-hand side of our chest and we marched in our village’s parade. During the minute of silence, Jack was the person we thought about.
We felt, and I think still feel, a personal connection to this man, despite never having met him and despite being, really, only distant relatives of his. Through this blog, I’ve been contacted by people who are more closely related to Jack than I am; he was one of nine children and there are many branches of the family tree. I’ve learned that there are many other people who think of him during their minute of silence, too.
That is no bad thing, and it’s partly why almost thirty years ago I dove into finding out more about Jack: so I can help to tell his story. But I’m not a direct descendent of his – to our knowledge, he never had any – and he was my grandfather’s uncle, not my grandfather. I didn’t grow up with him around, like the sons and daughters of the veterans I once knew. I didn’t see the effect that war had on him; I didn’t have to live with the person he might have become as a result. And I was far enough removed, in time and in family connection, that I didn’t experience how news of his death affected those he did live with. For those people, the shadow isn’t just in the corner on Anzac Day, the ‘one day of the year’, but it’s always there.
In my case, though, the extra level of removal from the story helps, I think. It allows me to look at things a bit dispassionately, and so perhaps more honestly. 2024 will see the 80th anniversary of the Lille operation from which Jack and his crew failed to return. That makes it a very very long time ago: it’s now almost (but not quite) outside of living memory. For me, that helps the thrill of the hunt for more information to outweigh the sheer horror of what might be found next. The official records, for example, contain some quite gruesome details of what happened to the bodies of the crew, for example. The distance in time makes it a lot easier to be pragmatic about that: this really happened, this is what war does to people.
That makes me lucky in a way. I’m a close-enough relation to a member of Bomber Command – to the point that I share a surname – to feel a personal connection to that person and his story. But at the same time I’m far enough away that any emotional response to it can be tempered somewhat. And perhaps that allows me to get a little closer to the real story.
© 2024 Adam Purcell
Something Very Big 