My father’s tears for comrades who did not return

THE 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month; Armistice Day, Remembrance Day, the day when fields of poppies grow on lapels and on coats and the day when tolling bells take on an extra and more sonorous significance.

A day that always makes me think of my dad, who served in the Royal Navy for many years and who fought in the Second World War and for whom this day was a day of overwhelming emotion.

My dad was a chap who would cry at the drop of a hat, I always thought, although as a teenager I once tested out the theory by dropping a hat of his on the floor and he didn’t weep, he merely said ‘Why have you dropped my hat on the floor?’

He didn’t need a hat to drop on Armistice Day, though. Just the date itself would set him off.

He never spoke much about his time in the war, although at times he could be persuaded to recount his part in the sinking of The Bismarck in 1941. He was on a destroyer called the HMS Zulu and his description of the action was brief and terse. ‘Were you scared?’ I asked, once. ‘Yes, I was’ he replied, starting to weep.

There’s an amazing painting in the Imperial War Museum collection called The Bismarck Action: HMS Zulu Under Fire, which shows my dad’s ship being shelled by the Bismarck and a huge plume of water splashing into the night air. The Zulu is thrashing around in the churning water and you can see some sailors in helmets being hurled around the deck. I first saw that picture online a few years ago and I always imagined, (and indeed I still do) that one of those vulnerable figures was my dad. After I’d seen the painting and it haunted my dreams I began to realise why he didn’t really want to talk much about the things he’d seen. I was born in 1956 and my dad left the Navy in 1958; when it was Remembrance Sunday he would lead the parade to the war memorial in Darfield, proudly wearing his campaign medals. I’m ashamed to say that as a sulky child I sometimes found this embarrassing but as I got older I began to realise what a vital role collective memory played in a kind of healing process, particularly for people of my dad’s generation and for veteran of the First World War who were still around as I was growing up.

In his latter years my dad was confined to a chair in the back room and could no longer attend the parade so he sat and watched the ceremony on TV broadcast live from The Cenotaph in London.

I sat on the settee near him and the crying started early, at the first glimpse of a flag fluttering or an old soldier making his steady way down the road. Sometimes my dad would wear his medals under his cardigan and sometimes they would be on the little table beside his chair, next to his cup of tea and a plate with a bit of shortbread on.

When the lone bugler played The Last Post I would glance across at my dad and see the faraway look in his eyes that told me he was back with his fallen comrades, the ones who wouldn’t get campaign medals, the ones who wouldn’t be coming home. He would mop his eyes with his huge hanky.

So today I’ll think of my dad and yes, I’ll shed a tear.