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The Beginning of a Love Affair

» September 2005

On a sunny Saturday afternoon in England, I scanned the shelves and tables heaped high with books in Waterstone’s bookstore, looking for something to occupy my time while I waited for my mobile to ring. I should be home working, I thought. My desk was still scattered with paperwork, unfinished lesson plans for the school classes I taught. But today I was to meet my pen pal, an Australian soldier I had been emailing for the past several months, who was in England on holiday from his overseas deployment. We had bonded over our shared interests in travel and history, and his sense of humour had helped reduce the stress of my hectic life as a teacher. I looked forward to reading his frequent emails and responding in turn, the reading and writing an enjoyable, creative outlet, an indulgence and escape from work.

My eyes wandered to my wristwatch. I thumbed a book, read a back cover, pulled my phone out of my jacket, and looked down at my wrist yet again. How long should I give the Aussie soldier before I headed home to go back to work? I had no way of knowing if he had even arrived in England, no phone number to call. I huffed. Do I take the next bus home? Or miss it and find myself stuck waiting two more hours for the one after that? I moved back to the table of books I had been through twenty minutes earlier, looking for something, anything, of interest. Then the phone finally rang.

I walked the short distance to the library, where we had agreed to meet. We were just going to have a face-to-face chat, maybe eat a meal together. Nothing more than an impromptu get-together of two friends in between one of their holiday flights. He’d be off to wherever, and I’d be back to my paperwork. As I approached, I smiled hesitantly at the man standing by the library entrance. Clean-cut, no one else standing around. He smiled back, standing face-on in the bright sunlight, hands on hips and a jacket resting on one forearm.

He stuck out his hand. “Hi, I’m Michael. You must be Lisa.”

I shifted my own jacket to the other arm as I offered him my hand. There had been only a few men in my life who had bothered to shake my hand.

I suggested we head to the park up the street as it was such a nice day. Finding an empty bench in the busy grounds, we sat down and chatted, getting a feel for one another. Within minutes I leaned back, one leg crooked up onto the bench, arm over the backrest. We conversed for well over an hour, asking and answering questions in turn. Watching the easygoing, relaxed figure, I was struck by a startling revelation. I had found a man I could see myself being friends with for the rest of my life.

Instead of going off to other meetings and activities as he had planned to do, Michael spent the next week with me, meeting me after work, holding my hand as we walked, visiting local museums, cooking me a meal, and falling asleep on my shoulder while I worked evenings on my laptop. As the week ended, I realized he had somehow worked his way into my heart.

Three years later, after numerous long-haul flights, meeting respective parents, a very short engagement, many marathon phone calls to plan an overseas wedding, and the insanity of applying for a spouse visa, I found myself stepping onto a Qantas plane with nothing more than a one-way ticket, a suitcase, and a carry-on bag. A few eyebrows must have been raised when security officers scanned my luggage. It was filled with choice bits of personal treasures from my past, including a collection of special teddy bears, memory sticks, photographs, some necessary clothing, and a copy of my paternal family tree tucked neatly into the front pouch. Having just paid off the last of my student loans, I couldn’t afford a shipping container or smaller crates to follow behind, so I gave the meagre contents of my cottage to friends and charity and said goodbye to a cold winter in Britain. When I stepped off the plane a day later, a blistering hot Australian summer greeted me.

Moving to Australia was the best and worst of experiences. I was finally living with my new husband after several months apart due to our respective job commitments, but finding employment in my new homeland proved incredibly difficult. Nearly eight and a half years earlier, when British education scouts spoke at my Canadian university about teaching opportunities overseas, I had eagerly looked into the possibility of teaching abroad and eventually moved to Britain, looking for a new start and maybe some adventure. England was part of my heritage, after all, and I was curious and excited to take a step back into the country my ancestors had come from. I’d had no trouble finding work—too much work. In the back of my mind I envisioned weekends of travelling around the countryside, frequenting old manor houses, delving into my family history. Pressing work commitments taking over every weekend and practically all my free time wasn’t exactly what I’d in mind, but it paid the bills.

In Australia, however, the job hunt wasn’t going quite the way I had planned. I hadn’t realized how restricted employment would be in the government area where we lived. Non-Australians are not permitted to take government employment, and a number of job postings that I might have had a chance at were put off limits by the phrase I’d come to dread: “Australian citizens only should apply.”

Michael and I had discussed the stresses of my previous job, and we had made a deal. I could apply for any job I wished but I was not allowed to bring work home. Being a bit of a workaholic, and knowing I would only be able to teach part-time under those conditions, I initially did not see a problem. Part-time or shared teaching positions were common in the British education system. However, in Australia, the idea of two teachers sharing a class was alien—and suspect. When this door closed, I set my sights on working in galleries or museums as an education officer. I would still have the enjoyment of working with students, but in a less stressful way. As well, I would be able to draw on my training in teaching, English, and art history, and develop my interest in various aspects of history. It seemed liked the perfect combination. Even if I couldn’t get an education position, I anticipated getting some kind of work, even menial labour, at a museum. I hadn’t expected museums to fall under the government restriction.

After several fruitless months—and knowing my lengthy education should have carried me to more than the single job interview I had achieved—I found myself, for the first time in my life, walking into an employment agency to see if they could offer me any advice on my resumé or cover letter. The small communal space began to swallow me whole as I explained my situation, only to find the advisor had no suggestions other than “just keep applying.”

The man sitting at the next table, working on a basic resumé, turned, looked me up and down, laughed, and quipped, “If you can’t get a job, then what the hell are my chances!” Better than mine, I thought. At least he was Australian. I wouldn’t be able to call myself an Aussie until four years had passed. I left the office barely able to keep the tears from running down my face. Four years! What was I going to do until then? What was I doing in this place?

I slunk home, defeated, rejected, with pain throbbing through the knot in my shoulders and up my neck. I had no way to prove my worth as a newly arrived wife and resident.

The following morning I got up as usual, made Michael’s breakfast and lunch, and kissed him before he left for work. I tried to tell myself it was a new morning, a new day; I should just be positive. I scanned the online job posts, looking for anything, however humble, that would let me gain some Australian work experience. Clicking through the pages there was nothing, nothing, nothing. Only restricted government jobs or work I could not do without prior experience I definitely did not have, like driving a transport truck, plumbing, or cutting hair.

By eleven I was ready to scream. I closed my eyes, leaned back in my chair, and squeezed the bridge of my nose, then pushed myself away from the computer and paced the room. I couldn’t go through another day looking at job posts, writing cover letters, and tweaking resumés. I stopped in the centre of the room, aimlessly staring at the closet door.

Taking a few steps, I reached out, slid the door aside, and looked at the pile of books, CDs, and photos. I cringed at the sight of my black portfolio, neatly tucked in the corner, silently snickering “loser” at me, before I averted my eyes and turned to the line of thin folders and other paperwork that actually belonged to me and not my husband. . . who was happily oblivious at work, in a job, a real job, unlike me.

I resisted the urge to grab everything and throw it onto the floor. I’d be the one picking it up, and I doubted that would improve my state of mind. I fingered the paperwork, looking for something, anything, that would take me as far away from Australia and my job search as I could get. Something red caught my eye.

That will do, I thought, pulling out the red folder containing a copy of my paternal family tree. I need a diversion.

My father’s cousin Marg had started collecting particulars on the Burt family years ago. I had never seemed to have more than one brief weekend a year to delve into her paperwork, and now I decided this would pass the hours nicely. I knew very little about my father’s side of the family except the confusion I had felt as an eight-year-old child grappling with the reality of death and remarriage and stepparents when my class at school was given a simple assignment to create a family tree.

“But why isn’t Grandpa’s last name the same as yours, Dad? The teacher said this side would have your last name and the other side would be under Mom’s maiden name.” So began what my parents probably felt was the equivalent of the Spanish Inquisition. The initial stark realization that some familiar last names didn’t link up, while names I had never heard before, and people I had never met, did go on the tree, bothered me deeply. Who were these people? What did they have to do with me? It had all seemed so confusing and unfair. Why wasn’t Grandpa my dad’s father? If he wasn’t Dad’s dad, then why did I call him Grandpa? Why couldn’t Grandma So-and-So go on my tree? The never-ending questions of a child continued as I tried to wrap my mind around this strange mix of family.

I can still remember sitting on Grandpa’s knee the following weekend and staring at that adoring, smiling face, trying to find the answers. Even though I was young, I was fully aware that asking him directly about his connection to the family tree might be inappropriate. I feared hurting him more than I feared never knowing the answers. But in that struggling silence in my heart, I still wondered how he was on my family tree. I called him Grandpa, and he was technically my grandpa, but he wasn’t my dad’s dad. He wasn’t blood. Worse yet, he wasn’t my blood. Who was he then? Who was I? For a very short while I resented the feeling that I had somehow lost something I could not put my finger on. Grandpa was dead, but he was here in front of me, wasn’t he?

Over the ensuing years, the confusion and resentment slipped into my unconscious. Then Grandpa died when I was fourteen, and my real grandfather stepped out of the shadows slightly when my grandmother gave me two rings, one belonging to the only grandfather I had ever known and another given to her by her first husband, my dad’s father, who had been too ill to go to war and died of meningitis in February 1942. A few pictures followed, but nothing more was said.

Over time I began to understand what constituted real family, which was something much broader than blood ties. My immediate family had countless friends and distant relatives who were not blood but were every bit as blood-bound as any true relatives. That eight-year-old mind still lurked within me, wanting to find the answers to the unspoken past, to faces without history, to find family in blood and non-blood alike. It was one catalyst that would shape the next three years of my life.

Now, as I took the family tree in hand, a number of photocopied photos dropped out of the folder. My great-great-grandfather and my second cousin Bud were among them, and I realized they were prime candidates for interesting research as they had military backgrounds, which I could possibly check online. I thumbed through the pages of relatives and found the few details of Bud’s life. He would be easiest to research, having served in the Second World War. And he had always held a special place in my mind, being my dad’s cousin and having died so young. Besides, it should be a quick task to gather information on a short-lived life, shouldn’t it?

Sitting back down at the computer and settling on my new focus, I entered the Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC) website. I had looked at this site years before and thought it might be the best place to start again. I typed in Bud’s real name, Robert George Alfred Burt, and scanned the data for him. Nothing new here. He had been a sergeant and an air gunner in the Royal Canadian Air Force and had died on March 15, 1944, at only twenty years old.¹ As I tapped my fingers on the desk, staring at the screen, it occurred to me that I might be able to link his grave details with those of other men who had died that night.

I clicked on the cemetery information link. Including Bud, there were seven casualties, a full crew for a Lancaster, all of whom died March 15, 1944. I realized, in that moment, that Bud must have been with these men when he died. The cemetery report listed the names and data of Douglas Cruickshank, William Lawrence Doran, Robert Henry Hudson, Norman Andrew Lumgair, George Parker, and William Taylor. These men had known Bud, but all of them were dead.

How could I find out more about them? All I knew about Bud was what my dad had told me when I was a child, but Dad was only a child himself when his cousin died. His knowledge amounted to the proud words “Bud was a tail gunner in a Lancaster bomber,” spoken whenever we watched a movie or a documentary on the Second World War. I possessed photocopies of two Second World War–era pictures and a poem Bud had written to his girlfriend not long before he died. Other than that I knew nothing about his life apart from the recorded data in front of me on the CWGC website.

I scrutinized the first of two photocopied photographs in my possession. An optimistic young man stared back at me, dressed in his uniform, cap at a distinct angle. No distinguishing markings on the sleeve or chest—a new recruit. He looked so young.

From my family ancestry information I knew Bud had come from a large family, the third-eldest of nine living children. I wondered how it must have been for his family to see him volunteer for active service. What would they remember? The surviving siblings would be in their early seventies, if not in their eighties. I had never met any of them. If I tracked them down, would they be able—or willing—to tell me anything about this beaming chap? What visions of their brother did they hold?

I clicked on the cemetery photo link and enlarged the photo of the graves. Using the grave number from each crew member’s information, I identified Bud’s tombstone and determined which crew members belonged to the other graves. Flowers spanned all seven graves as though they had just been laid to rest yesterday, not over sixty-five years ago. Who took care of these men in their final resting place? Had the families visited the graves? Did their relatives know what had happened to these men? Did they know their brother or son or husband lay entombed in Hilsenheim Communal Cemetery . . .which sounded more like a German village cemetery than a graveyard in Bas-Rhin, France? Why was that?

In the second photocopy, Bud stood on the edge of a path, smiling but perhaps a little less naive, his gunner boots and mitts on, a couple of Nissen huts in the background. Who took the picture? Was the photographer still alive? I wondered if Bud had sent this picture with the verse he had penned to his girlfriend while overseas. A Brampton newspaper printed the poem after he was listed as missing.

With the facts from the CWGC to aid my research, I started typing the crew names, squadron, hometowns, and so on into Google. What appeared was beyond my expectations. I had stepped into a world that was oddly familiar, with place names I recognized from both Canada and Britain. I had been to Brampton and Vancouver in Canada, and was not all that far away from York on a trip to the Lake District while living in Britain. These fly boys had ended up far from home, not unlike me, although in different circumstances.

The next thing I knew, I heard the gate creak open; Michael was home. Where had the afternoon gone? I quickly saved the information and set it aside.

The next day I checked the job pages but, finding nothing new, turned my attention back to researching Bud and his crew mates. The work was like a special treat, like warm cookies baked by Mom and eaten straight off the pan, fresh from the oven. For the first time in weeks I felt good. I found countless websites on the war, including forums if I wanted to ask questions, and slowly I began to link information to the boys and how they fit into the war as a whole. One piece of information, a story about the crash on March 15, 1944, which I found on the Wittisheim council website, even mentioned Bud by name.² I stared in disbelief, trying to absorb the French tale of events surrounding the crash. I quickly translated the story, which described how Bud had been found in his turret with an axe. According to the article, Bud had been trying to escape his turret by hacking at the turret mountings. Tears rolled down my face as I realized Bud hadn’t died sweetly oblivious to his end. He knew his fate rested on whether he could escape his turret. Something had gone terribly wrong.

“You should write a book,” Michael commented a few days later when I could no longer keep my revelations to myself and worked up the nerve to show him what I had found while I was supposed to be job hunting. He had to be joking. Was it possible to find enough information to make the crew’s story an entire book, a memorial to their short but amazing lives? Right now I was collecting more questions than answers, but my curiosity got the better of me. With my secret out and my husband’s little push, I found myself falling deeper and deeper into the past. I had unknowingly taken a job without a wage.