On Being the Son of a World War Two soldier

British Army ID Card

Between 1939 and 1947, and as far I'm aware, my dad served with the Royal Irish Fusiliers (infantry), and the Royal Army Service Corps (dispatch rider) in France, Germany, Holland, Belgium, Egypt, and Norway. At 16, he lied about his age to get in.

I asked him recently if he regretted going in so young? "We thought it would all be over in a week!" He replied nonchalantly. Five years later, and as the war in Europe came to an end, he was home for a weekend and went back to Norway for a year for what he called his 'long weekend away'.

North Africa 1942

Growing up around my dad wasn't easy but it was my mother that caught the flak from a man who had fought and seen things that even some of the toughest guys today could barely imagine. I took my mother's side always and even though I was a young boy, I did what I could to support her in whatever way I could.

British Army WW2 Medals 1939 - 1945

For me dad, there were no counsellors... no one to mange the virtually unmanageable issues he had to have carried with him through the trenches and battlefields and all the way to his civilian life. I'd ask him about it from time to time but his recollections were selective, I realize now, knowing a little more about the events he would have been involved in, that had it been me then I'd have been even more selective.
A few years ago, I was thinking alot about his role in the Army and the kind of life he would have become accustomed to. Whatever way you look at it.. just surviving all of that and then returning to civilian life must have been incredibly hard and maybe that's partly the reason why he wasn't easy to live with when I was growing up. Ultimately I guess, he deserves some respect for what he endured during the war and perhaps a little compassion for the way he was afterwards. His only listeners would have been the fellas in the pub and maybe occasionally, his Priest.

The thing is, it occured to me that being the son of a WWII soldier is quite a bit different to being brought up by a father who has known only civilian life. I didn't have to spit and polish my shoes and have the creases in my trousers inverted, but there are parts of me that are very much him, things that he'd picked up along the way during the war, and either intentionally and/or unintentionally instilled in me.

I recognize those values, those views, that way of being in exactly the same way as the rest of us recognize non-military traits that came from our parents and I also acknowledge the things I'd rather not have inherited from him.

Fortunately, my mother provided the perfect balance; a more simplistic view of living with a greater emphasis on arts and music than my Dad's emphasis upon 'grafting' and 'applying' myself. If my dad had a vision of how I would turn out perfectly for him, then my destiny would have been the Liverpool dockyards, a 'decent' trade, or as a last resort... the Army. He didn't visualize a 'college pudding' of a son, so I didn't oblige him until my late twenties. When I got my degree, he didn't bat an eyelid ;o)

I wrote this piece as a tribute to a man that brought me up; not for being a great father or husband, but for doing what he did to defeat an unimaginably horrific adversary. I want to say 'Thanks' for fighting for us, to all the guys that fought really.


As time goes by, our younger generations are more distant from these conflicts, from the sheer collective resolve to put things right for the rest of us. I don't really recall too many heartfelt thanks being offered to soldiers who fought after 1945 to the present day. That's sad. I guess, for all the great things men and women have achieved, we never did manage to overcome that primitive concept of 'out of sight - out of mind'.