Great Uncle Harry by Michael Palin

As you get older you start feeling a responsibility to preserve what you know about family history and this is why Michael Palin felt he he had to write the story of his Great Uncle Harry.

Some years ago an elderly cousin of his father passed on to Palin a box of photographs and papers that had come from down from her grandparents (his great grandparents), and as she had no children, she gave it to him to keep it in the family. For a long time everything just sat in a box as there were other more pressing projects to deal with, but when working on a documentary about the last days of the First World War, Palin found his great uncle's name carved on a memorial at the site of the Somme battlefields. When he discovered that there was no grave to visit and Harry's final resting place was 'Known Only Unto God', he knew he had to know more.

Writing a book like this is a lot harder than it looks because the old family notebooks and papers only gave the bare outline of information, and it was down to Palin to dig into the history of the First World War to discover exactly where the war had taken Harry and the experiences he would have had on the battlefield.

The family had never treated Harry as a war hero as he had been the last of seven children born into a gifted family, and unlike his siblings, he had never made much of himself and was drifting through jobs across the Empire. The cousin who handed over the papers implied that there was not much worth knowing about him, but that was even more reason for Palin to discover what really happened. Why did Harry go to New Zealand and what did he do in his 32 years of life?

I really enjoyed this book and I felt I had a connection with the story because one of my Great Uncles also served with the ANZAC Army and fought in some of the same battles. He was luckier than Harry as he sustained an injury that was severe enough to have him sent home, and he went on to live to the grand old age of 95.

I think it is so important to remember the sacrifices of past generations, and now that over 100 years have gone by, books like this are a good way to remind us that every name on the memorials is a person who lived a life before it was taken away.

Comments

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