Every Monday in my postbox I receive a copy of the local newspaper. The Moonee Valley Leader usually shrinks to less than half its thickness once the advertising flyers are removed, but every now and then it reports on interesting stories with local connections. Just after ANZAC Day this year it ran this story  about a 100 Squadron airman, P/O Jack Wilson, killed in action over Holland in January 1945. He and his wife were living in Essendon when he enlisted, and the story was about how his daughter – two years old at the time of her father’s death – made contact with a British researcher after by chance finding an earlier article in the Leader seeking information about P/O Wilson.

The British man is Paul Kurn, whose father was a ground mechanic with 100 Squadron, responsible for Lancaster JB603, the aircraft on which P/O Wilson had died. Mr Kurn’s search for the story of his father’s war began in 1998 and was originally centred around the operations carried out by this aircraft, before shifting into looking for the airmen who had flown it. He contacted the newspaper using P/O Wilson’s wartime address. It took a year, but eventually the right person saw the article and made contact.

Writing to local newspapers is a tactic that can, as this story demonstrates, be very effective. People of that era tended not to move around nearly as much as we might do today and so if they are still alive there is a good chance of their being in the same area six or seven decades later, if not in the same house. Articles also being published online these days greatly strengthens the chances of finding the right person by bringing them within the reach of a simple Google search. All it takes is one curious relative to look for something as straightforward as a name. Patience – and a good deal of luck – can certainly pay off in this research caper.

Paul Kurn set out on his journey with similar intentions to my own. Finding descendants of the crew, he said, gives him “…a chance to maybe tell them of what happened to their relative and […] to shed light on something that they may have wondered about for 60 years without any idea what happened in those final moments and where it happened… The story has grown beyond anything I could have imagined”.

Telling the crews’ stories, and remembering. That’s why we do it.

© 2012 Adam Purcell