FAMILIES REUNITED BY A WAR

he promised to call his father to get details about his great-uncle’s RAF service.

That night I phoned Matthew Caldwell, a recently acquired friend and fellow Kiwi who owns Silly Solly’s discount stores in Ingham and Airlie Beach, to compliment him on a range of Asian curry kits he was selling for just $3.

I told him that I had made the perfect rogan josh with meat from Halifax, population 462, and about the unlikely family connection spanning three generations and at least 75 years in a city 3800km away.

“My grandfather was a Spitfire pilot from Dunedin also,” he said.

“He fought in the Battle of Britain, the works. He got shot down three times over water and survived each time. And he couldn’t even swim.”

With the closure of the New Zealand Defence Force archives due to the COVID-19 pandemic, members of both families have been able to piece together over the past week a likely shared service record.

While my grandfather did not serve in the Battle of Britain, he was posted to England not long after, with both the late Thomas Caldwell and Mr Macdonald subsequently serving in the Mediterranean and South-east Asian theatres of war.

Sandy was invalided home with malaria near the end of the war, while Mr Caldwell settled in Christchurch.

Mr Barton is believed to have served as a RAF fighter bomber pilot with Australian and American service personnel in New Guinea.

Asked about the chances of three individuals from Hinchinbrook with relatives from Dunedin who all served as fighter pilots during WWII, with at least two likely to have served together, Mr Caldwell said, “a million to one”.

“It’s insane, absolutely insane, never would have believed it.”

I drove out to Halifax this afternoon.

“It’s a huge coincidence,” Mr Edmonds said, “incredible.”

My grandmother, Coral, who possessed an encyclopaedic knowledge of Otago history, passed away at age 93 in Lucinda, just 10km from Halifax.

I am sure she must have visited the local butcher with my mother, Linda.

She would have been thrilled beyond belief to have known about her personal connections to the man behind the counter.

I