My father chose to fight for his country 2026 4 10
which is to say he needn't have volunteered, aged 35, with a wife and two young boys, aged 2 and 3, his father Catholic Irish, his mother of Orange Order Northern Irish extraction, and he already working in a job which was vital for the UK's war against Hitler's Germany. Suffice then to say he volunteered because of a misplaced idealism: all his younger brothers-in-law had already joined up: Frank Wall serving in Italy, Eddie, my wife's elder sibling, elsewhere over seas, young George in Egypt, only the older Bob, in the same age group, remaining home not yet called up because of his similar age, or possibly a year older? But 4 years on, en route to the Japanese theatre of war, stationed in Canberra Australia, and presumably deemed to being A1, in health, before his embarcation, he had contracted Leukemia, which swept him away in record time, of only a few weeks or months, certainly not a time measured in years. As a budding Chemist, by prpofession, I thought he may ...