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Loss, Identity

Gerard van der Leun’s moving and somewhat disturbing tale of identity and loss in war at American Digest.    

The only person I’ve ever heard of with my name is an elderly black gentleman in Alabama.    

Encountered him at Google.  Survivor and convicted mutineer in the 1944 explosion at Port Chicago in San Francisco Bay. Imagine my surprise.  I have to say I respect him for turning down the pardon.  I can’t find it here but recall reading that he said he had already served his time.

Re uncles, there are a lot of them missing. I’m missing one. RAAF Flt, Sgt. Philip Crittenden, “in flying battle,” Belgium, Oct. 21, 1941.  I found his name etched into the wall at the Australian war Memorial when I was a kid. Corndog’s missing one, British Army, El Alamein.  JeffS, as noted in comments, missing one, B-17 crewman.  Guy I work with is missing two, one on each side.

Topics: other

  Posted by Jules Crittenden at 3:35 pm on Saturday, June 16, 2007

4 Responses to “Loss, Identity”

1. saltydog Says:
   June 16th, 2007 at 4:08 pm

   That was a very poignant story, Jules. Thanks for sharing it.

2. RebeccaH Says:
   June 16th, 2007 at 4:30 pm

   Thanks for the links, both of them. Gerard van der Leun described the path traveled by a great many people over the last three or four decades.

3. The_Real_JeffS Says:
   June 16th, 2007 at 4:42 pm

   An excellent story, Jules. Thank you.

   I can sympathize with Gerard van der Leun. An uncle of mine was killed in WWII, a member of a B17 bomber crew. My older brother, the first born after the war, was named after him.

4. spqrzilla Says:
   June 16th, 2007 at 7:54 pm

   I recently spent a couple of weeks in Europe. Visited the battlefields in Ypres, where there are cemetaries containing mind numbing tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of graves. The Tyne Cot cemetary has a memorial with the list of names of nearly 35 thousand missing in action, with no known remains and another memorial in Ypres itself at the Menin Gate has another 55 thousand such missing without any known remains.

   Puts the present casualty rates in a sort of perspective.

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