大象传媒

I am the Son of a Scottish soldier, who died 3 months before I was born. I wish to tell my story as I am certain there are many like me, who will never have known know first hand their fathers. We will all have had a common, lifelong experience of yearning; of wondering how it might have been. Some facts will have been provided by relatives as best they can, but they will never have come remotely close to satisfying the perplexed, yearning that never leaves, particularly in June. Throughout my life, but more markedly since the 50 year old D Day celebrations a while ago now, my emotions have increasingly come to the surface for reasons I cannot properly explain.

I hope this is a story you are interested in, if only because so many like me have been affected by the War and will never know their fathers.

My Father, William McCabe from the Wishaw Area, managed to survive D day and all its horror, only to be killed 3 weeks later outside Caen in Normandy, where he is buried. No doubt what he faced was equally terrifying. I have visited the cemetary just a few times, but only in reent years. My yearning to know my father has been satisfied a little by visits to his grave; no doubt about this. It is as close as I will ever be to my father, it is of some comfort. Although I am not too big on believing in the spirit world, somehow I do feel close when I touch his gravestone; perhaps it is simply my imagination playing tricks, but I do feel some sort of communication, and one or two experiences have occurred since I first started my journey more earnestly a few years ago to find out more about my dad that lead me to believe it is more than simple imagination.

The strange thing to me is that my mother, still alive and having outlived a second marriage which provided me with four loving half brothers and sisters, has never been too willing to share her knowledge of my father. I did ask from time to time, as I grew up, but I did not gain much insight. I tended to not even try in the end; I have gained most of what little I know from my mother's sisters. I guess everyone has their own way of handling the death of a husband at a young age, (my mother would have been 19); certainly I have felt as if I am prying, and have never pushed it for this reason. Maybe her way of coping was somehow to block out all thoughts.

Last year, for the first time, we took my mother to see her husbands grave. I cannot explain why it took her so long to want to visit. She is in her 80's now, and I guess she feels she had to do it before it is too late. From being so firm that she would not be emotional, I have never seen her more so; our mother is pretty tight with her feelings in front of her children. My half sister (who is not in any way regarded as other than a normal sister) of course looked upon this scene, with her own father now dead. I am not sure what she was thinking, with this show of emotion from our mother, but it is not something she will have seen often, if ever, displayed for her father, (that is another story).

In any event, no one can answer the real questions; how would we have been as father and son growing older together; what sort of experiences would we have had; would he have been successful in life or not, in terms of a career or business; what memories would I now have of growing up; certainly the current void would not be there. Would my mother and father have stayed together I ask! Would he have been satisfied with his life; would he have been healthy. Would I have done something to make him proud. I remember when young wondering whether he was strong physically; what sports was he good at.

I doubt if my father was a hero in the accepted sense, such as a VC hero; he may have been to some extent; he may not have been. Only he and his close mates will have known what events took place; what actions they were involved in. I am not looking for this sort of validation. He could have been at the back, as I would probably have been. I will never know. I do not really care whether he was or not. He certainly did his duty like millions of others, and died so others may live. If I take how I would feel, I do know that if your country is under attack, then no doubt you have to do your duty, and I am sure he will have felt this.

I know for sure no one wants to die when so young and he would not have been any different; he was 26 years old. He must have been scared out of his mind like all of them. He will have known I was on the way, and I assume would have been looking forward so much to seeing me when I was born on his next break in duty. Instead he is buried next to comrades, some older, some as young as 19, all of whom died on the same day; so much cannon fodder; dispensable souls all, part of a giant jigsaw, or game of chess. Maybe there was some master plan, but as we all know in wars, so many things go wrong; so much is not in control; death does not discriminate between the young and old, the good and the bad.

I remember when I was 26, I had my first strong thoughts for my dad; I felt some anxiety, and was relieved to get past this age; how strange is that! It was a milestone to me in some very personal way. I recall thinking how my dad would have been at that age; I knew then how I was and how different were my experiences. Another problem is that I do not even have one good photo of my dad; life has construed against me in this respect. Do not get me wrong, as generally I have led a happy and fulfilling life so far. I am a 60 year old grandfather hoping to retire very soon. It is my father I am mostly sad for, and that he was never able to live his life; what a total waste. Of course I speak for all like me. In the book of rememberances at his cemetry, most striking was a comment from a mother who lost both her sons at the same time, and has visited every year since the war; the grief is still raw.

As I say, my overriding thought when I visit him is to feel the waste of so many young lives who never got a chance to live as I have. The sadness of this is unbelieveable (Arromaches to me is the most evocative of places). The same is true of so many others of course; you only have to visit Normandy to see how many cemetaries there are, including lest we forget in the present age American ones.

In 1999, I tried to find his long lost sister in the USA, as my mother lost touch so long ago. She alone could at least have told me about him in the sort of detail I wanted to know about. It was not to be however, as I discovered she had died in 1997. Why oh why did I leave it so late. I did meet her daughter, but, and this sounds macabre, she died on the day we met; she was in an intensive care unit at the time. We spoke for a quarter of an hour only.

Today as I survey modern Britain as an older citizen, I am not sure what to think; I am not sure what my father would think. I appreciate things move on; nothing stays the same. I do not want to put in print all I think, as it may be irrelevant in any event and purely my personal opinion, which is like all personal opinions, often arrived at in a vacuum and without knowledge of all that is happening around one, and perhaps coloured by ones own prejudices and experiences. However, I know for sure the death of my father was not in vain, at least not at the time. Perhaps my experience colours my thinking more than some, who do not like all that is happening now to Britain; what indeed is Britain these days? It all seemed clear 60 years ago. Freedom has a price, and I fully appreciate this, and I know my father would have felt the same. However I would dearly love to know what he would think of Britain today, and whether all the sacrifices were worth it, 60 years on.

As for the state of the world, I do not see much has changed in one sense; conflicts will never end. There will be more children like me unfortunately. We assume the world is a civilised place, and from what I can see of it and its tribalism, it never will be. The great pity is that a far bigger threat is presented by what we are doing to the environment; how we all get together to change this I do not know.

I do not want to finish on a sad note, and if my father is listening to my thoughts, because of him and others, at least my life and many others has been good and fulfilling, and I am genuinely proud of his sacrifice for the greater good and a just cause, even though undoubtedly he would not have wanted to die.

Thank you for allowing me to speak.

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