Some scars never heal
My mother is 90. As a child she had a favourite uncle called Steve Hector. She adored him as he treated her like an adult and always made her laugh. Steve did well at school and had a good job in a firm of stockbrokers in the City. A lot of the family's hopes rested on his shoulders. I was brought up on stories of Steve and was encouraged to work hard at school, like him.
Sadly Steve never fulfilled his early promise as he was killed in 1943 fighting the Japanese in Burma as a Chindit. He was defending a group of injured colleagues. None survived. His body was never recovered which greatly upset his brothers. For years one of them would take out adverts in military magazines asking if anyone knew what became of Steve.
Later today I will ring my mother. As it is VJ Day I think that it likely that we will talk about Steve. However, I will not press her. Some scars never heal.
Director at Veracity UK Ltd
4 年Hi Jeremy, I've written a story about a neighbour who was in a prison of war camp in Malaya. He crawled out of the camp to help the resistance and decades later went to meet the then 14 girl who had dared to crawl in to get help with their clandestine radio. It's in my new book called 'Holiday Shorts' with a several more WW2 stories amongst many others. The revenue from the book is all being donated to the charity 'Child Rescue Nepal.' Available from https://bit.ly/holidayshorts Regards Garf Collins
Very sad and moving
Chief SEO Officer delivering cost effective SEO and Digital Marketing for Clients
4 年So sad, Jeremy. I'm aware of the Chindits (and a little of what they went through) for a couple of reasons. Reason 1 is my interest in WW2 and reason 2 is my dad. Dad was in India with the RAF during the war, a wireless engineer so no flying duties. He occasionally mentioned the Chindits and how they fought a forgotten war, and how the Chindits themselves seemed forgotten. I remember that he used to have a Kukri in a leather scabbard complete with the smaller blade and sharpening tool. I tried asking him about it a couple of times but he seemed reluctant to talk about it. On reflection, I wonder whether his interest (and the kukri) was due to a closer involvement than he was prepared/willing to talk about. I'll never know
Partner at Clark Holt, Commercial Solicitors
4 年Very kind Stuart
VP, General Counsel at Cutover
4 年I’ll bear this in mind today Jeremy