St Patrick's Day..? 2019 3 17 (8) 25 2 3

Yesterday I was talking to my brother J about our father J senior's letters home during the immediate years leading to his untimely death, just as WW ll was ending, at something close to half our current ages. I was feeling somewhat guilty in the telephone when he rang me because these letters have been in my possession since our mother died in the 00's, when I took it upon myself to be our father's purveyor with regard to these kind of artefacts, because my elder son J S had taken a great interest in our family history, unlike anyone of my generation, though of course the subject was still of interest to everyone. I had earlier in the day been running through all the members of our parents' generation who went off to fight in WW ll: our mother's 2 brothers E and G but not the oldest sibling R who at 36 I worked out would only be a year older than our father when he volunteered to join the war as a Royal Marine Engineer Commando, when he too would have been exempt owing to the fact he was already employed on war effort duties, building packing cases for aircraft spares. I don't know what R's reason for his not joining up, probably nothing more than the fact he was regarded unsuitable owing to his advanced age..? Then there were her two brothers-in-law F and B, stationed in Italy and India respectively, who probably had a bearing on our father's decision to join up himself..?

Whatever the event we have only recently learnt the extent to which our father was ½ Irish, which to say but for each of his grandfathers’ families leaving Ireland in the mid-19^th century, one of Orange Order stock from C. Monaghan, the other RC from C. Dublin (Protestant and Roman Catholic respectively) we none of us in these later generations would be here, and for someone who spent a good deal of his life regarding the Irish with the utmost suspicion and caution, to discover as one approaches old age that I too have a ¼ of my genes from the emerald Isle…

So my brother J with the memory stick I sent him by post has been reading Dad’s letters’ home. We both agreed how astute he was in anticipating events which lead to Britain being the victor over Hitler’s Reich army. Then I pointed out what a poor speller he was and how during my reading of one of his letters I had compiled a list of all the words I believed him to have miss-spelt, only to discover later with a dictionary that I was only ½ right whilst Da was also ½ correct! This trait then I told J junior came to me from him, and to him evidently from his mother LL, our paternal grandmother, who had the same defect, referring him also to her letter on the same stick…

My brother J and I couldn’t be more different in every way. Physically we are complete opposites: he had white hair already in his early 30’s and blue eyes like his mother, whilst he too is a good speller like her, an ex-Grammar School girl, and like our sister M has the most perfect set of teeth even now as an octogenarian. Like my Da, with his thick dark hair until Death my hair is still not white if nonetheless beginning to grey somewhat these last few years, with my father’s brown eyes and teeth augmented with dentures too like he. But temperamentally who knows the extent to which one or other of us takes more after him?

In terms of leadership qualities it is not difficult to separate us because despite his being my elder brother, J junior was always happy for me to take the lead with navigation in the mountains and sailing at sea, and otherwise organising where we would stay, etc., and through management jobs in industry I guess my leadership skills shone more, whilst he had no such ambitions he always maintained, so when Da joined up, and died a Private after 4 years, perhaps I was more like him physically whilst J junior was more like him temperamentally..?

So May the road rise up to meet you all, on this St. Patrick’s Day 2019!.