After Alistair Morrison’s death on September 9, 2009, this letter was found with his will. It was in a sealed envelope addressed to his grandson Lachlan. On it was written NOT TO BE OPENED UNTIL AFTER MY DEATH.
August 19, 2007
Dear Lachlan:
If you’re reading this letter, then you already know that your old grandpa has “gone West,” as we used to say in the Army. I’m writing this letter on the 65th anniversary of the Dieppe Raid. I know that today some of the men I served with will be standing on Blue Beach for a memorial service. When the band plays “O Canada,” these old men in their berets and medals will salute and people will cry.
I always remember this day in my own way.
But I’ve never wanted to go back to that beach. Nor have I ever wanted to join the Legion and swap war stories — stories that get more embellished with every telling. However, there is one war story that I have never told anyone. It has lain in my heart as a terrible secret for sixty-three years. For a long time, I tried to cover over what really happened in Stalag VIIIB and how Mackie really died. I think I needed to do that to survive. But now that I’m an old man, the urge to tell someone the truth about it weighs very heavily on me.
I hope you will forgive me for unloading this burden on you, Lachlan. But you’re the only person to whom I think I can entrust this. You’re also the only person who has read my account of what happened to me at Dieppe and afterwards. But the story that I told there about how Mackie died is a lie.
You may remember me describing how distraught I was in October of 1943 when Mackie became so determined to escape from Stalag VIIIB. That part is all true. I knew that he was going to make a break through the tunnel he’d worked so hard to build. I also knew that he would almost certainly be captured, and very likely shot. When he refused to talk to me about it, I felt really hurt. The thought of having to survive in that camp without him filled me with gloom.
On the day that I knew he was going to escape, I became desperate. I racked my brains to think of a way to stop him. The two FMRs had escaped the night before and the tunnel entrance would soon be filled with dirt. I knew that Mackie would try to make a break for it that night.
During that afternoon there was a soccer game going on behind the compound — playing soccer in shackles wasn’t easy but we managed. I went into our hut and saw that it was empty. I grabbed one of the Red Cross boxes filled with soil. Walking outside with it under my arm, I headed for the guards’ barracks. A few of them were outside enjoying an off-duty cigarette. I walked by them, but when I was still where they could see me, I deliberately tripped. As I fell over, the box hit the ground and its contents spilled out. I quickly scooped the sandy soil back into the box, hurried back to the hut and stowed the box back under a bunk. I don’t think any of the other POWs saw me, but I was sure the guards had. And I knew that they understood where the sand in the box had come from.
Before long, there were cries of “Raus, Raus!” as Spitfire and the goons conducted one of their “routine searches.” They began next door in 19A, tearing apart bunks and throwing clothes and blankets out the door and windows. By the time they got to 19B, a crowd had gathered outside. The goons had brought poles with them and were tapping the concrete floor. All of a sudden I saw Mackie racing red-faced from behind the barracks. He pushed through the crowd and charged into 19B. I heard yelling and swearing from inside and a few minutes later, three guards dragged out a struggling and kicking Mackie and hauled him off to the cooler. I felt guilty about this, but thought that at least he would be safe there. A half hour later, a very proud Spitfire was able to show the camp commandant the “prize” he had so cleverly discovered. The next day the entrance shaft to the tunnel was filled with poured concrete.
They kept Mackie in the cooler for two weeks. Work began almost immediately on another tunnel from Hut 22B. There was also talk of the Germans having planted a spy among us who had given away the location of the first tunnel. Then rumours about us being transferred to another camp began circulating. I tried to get word to Mackie in the cooler. I wanted to tell him that it would be easier to escape from the new camp. But the goons wouldn’t allow him any visitors.
I didn’t know that Mackie had been let out of the cooler until I heard the noise. Our whole compound was cheering as he was put into line at the evening Appell. He seemed very pale and a little shaky. When I went towards him later he only stared at me very coolly. After they took our shackles off that night he crawled straight into his bunk. I thought he was just overtired and would feel more like talking in the morning.
The sound of a siren outside woke me up. Spotlights were sweeping the compound. I ran to the window and saw a man climbing the fence. I knew immediately that it was Mackie. The guard in the nearest tower fired shots over his head, but Mackie kept on going. He leapt across to the second fence. He must have had a wire cutter, because he managed to cut through the barbed wire at the top of the outside fence. Machine-gun fire ricocheted around him, but I saw him jump to the ground and begin to turn away. It was only then that he was caught in a hail of bullets.
“No!” I wailed as I saw him fall. “Please! No, no, no!”
I yanked on my boots and ran out of the hut. Outside the fence, some guards had picked Mackie up and were carrying him back to the main gate. I ran to the gate of our compound. They were taking him to the infirmary. I prayed that he was only wounded. Suddenly I was grabbed by two goons and swung around to face Spitfire.
“Please! I must see him!” I stammered in my broken German, pointing to the infirmary. “He is my friend!”
“Sein Freund? — his friend?” sneered Spitfire, imitating my voice. Then he spat out the words that have haunted me ever since. “Sie sind sein Judas!”
I took a step back, shocked. Spitfire had said, “You are his Judas!”
The guards hauled me back to the hut. The next morning at Appell I heard that Mackie had died in the night. We buried him in the camp cemetery the next day. The word Judas — that damning word that Spitfire had hissed at me — echoed constantly in my ears. The thought that I had betrayed my friend, the best man I had ever known, made me want to die. There were many times when I thought of simply heading for the wire myself.
One of the things Padre Foote said to me at Camp IID was that we had to live for those who had died. So I resolved to live for Mackie’s sake. After returning home, Lachlan, I decided to go to university and become a history teacher, just as he had said I should. Your father is named Hamish after Mackie — a name he never liked. But still the thought that I had helped bring about Mackie’s death would sometimes overwhelm me. It nearly killed me to have to lie to Mackie’s family about how he had died.
About six months after I came home I had what in those days was called a nervous breakdown. I was in hospital for a while and then in a convalescent home for veterans. While I was recovering I met your wonderful grandmother, who was a nurse there. I never told her the whole story of how Mackie died — just about the crippling guilt I felt for having survived. She, too, persuaded me that it was my duty to live my life in honour of Mackie and the others who never came home.
That is what I have tried to do, Lachlan. And that is why I’ve written about my war experiences for you. There are so many terrible things about war. But one of the most horrifying is that colossal mistakes are made — mistakes that cost thousands of lives. Mistakes that mark the lives of those who survive, sometimes forever.
I can only hope and pray, Lachlan, that you, and your children and grandchildren, if you have them, will be spared from wars and the horrors they inflict.
I leave you my warmest wishes for a long and happy life.
Your loving grandpa,
Alistair Morrison
In another, larger envelope, Lachlan Morrison found a slightly scorched, leather-bound copy of Rob Roy by Sir Walter Scott and a photograph of three young Canadian soldiers in Trafalgar Square with pigeons perched on their arms and shoulders. Also included was a war service medal and a small bronze bar that said Dieppe. Both were still in wrappers that had never been opened.