261953 L/Cpl. Alan George Albert Waddington British Army 5th Btn. Duke of Cornwalls Light Infantry from:Surbiton, Surrey (d.18th Nov 1944) Alan Waddington was the uncle I never got to meet. He was my Dad's much loved older brother, some ten years older than Dad. Shortly before the attack in the forest where he was killed in 1944, Alan had received a letter from back home, saying that his wife had given birth to their first baby, a little boy, and he had written back saying how pleased he was to have become a father. He also asked that the baby boy be called David. This was the last letter he would write. Maybe it was just too painful for my heartbroken aunt to use that name, for some reason she decided instead to call the baby Leslie.
My grandmother told the family that my uncle was 'missing, presumed dead,' and my father (for a very long time) clung to the dream that maybe his brother would turn up one day (having been in hiding, or taken prisoner, or lost his memory). As the years went by, this seemed less and less likely.
When my parents had their first child in 1950, they knew straight away that they must call him Alan, after my Dad's brother.
It was only after my grandmother died in 1966 that, sorting through her possessions, the family found a much-read crumpled letter addressed to her, and written by a friend of my uncle's in November 1944 sent from the front. The letter said how sorry he was to have to tell her that he had witnessed her son being killed by an exploding shell, and that death would have been instant.
|