Missing (4 page)

Every morning, Will went out to the barn to begin the day’s work. Taking care of the orchard kept him busy from sunrise to sunset. He was glad to have something to do. The hard work helped him to stop thinking about Jack’s death.

Indoors, Peggy kept the blinds closed. Most of the time, the house was dark and in shadow. She walked through the rooms and asked herself the same questions, over and over.
Where did Jack’s plane go down? Where did it crash? Where is our son buried? His body has to be in a grave somewhere. But where?

If only she could learn the answers to these questions. But the war continued, and she had no way of finding out.

One day, when Will was outside in the orchard, Peggy went upstairs to Jack’s bedroom. She opened the dresser drawer and looked at the pile of letters Jack had sent home. Beside them lay his belongings, which had been sent from England after his plane had gone missing.

Peggy lifted the items out of the drawer and set them on the bed. Jack’s shaving kit. His identity card. His log book.

The log book was so small, it could fit in the palm of Peggy’s hand. She opened it slowly and turned the pages, knowing that Jack had held the same book in his own two hands. He had started the log while training in England. Every time he had flown an airplane, he’d recorded times and distances and the type of plane. He’d added detailed notes about fog and wind and weather.

Jack had written about his first solo flight on page 4 of the log. That must have been a special day for him. At the bottom of each page, he had added up all the minutes and hours he spent flying through the skies. One of his instructors had written a special note after Jack had flown sixty hours. The note said that Jack was ready for
active service
, ready to carry out patrols and missions.

After that, Jack made an entry in the log about the day he started “bomb dropping.” Peggy did not like to read about “bomb dropping.” When Jack’s plane had crashed, he had flown a total of one hundred hours.

Peggy closed the small book, walked over to the window, and opened the blind. She looked up to a blue sky, and she felt the sun warm her through the glass. She opened the window to let in some fresh air, went back to the bed, and sat down. She thought about the kind of child Jack had been when he was a small boy. He had always wanted to be a pilot.

When Jack was four years old, he began to fold and cut paper into the shapes of airplanes. He stood on a chair and sailed his paper planes through the kitchen. He laughed and sang and made up stories about flying.

As he grew older, he built toy airplanes out of wood and strips of cloth. He began to read books and magazines about “flying machines.” Many of these stories were about men and women who tested the new machines in the air.

Peggy thought about all of these things, and more. She thought about how safe and happy the family had been when Jack was living at home. Then, in 1914, war broke out. Young men from all parts of Canada became soldiers and left home. Nurses and doctors, too. All had sailed across the Atlantic Ocean from Halifax
to England. After that, they were sent to France or to other battlefields. Many of these young people had been killed. Like Peggy, millions of mothers were grieving.

Peggy returned to the dresser and lifted Jack’s letters from the drawer. She put them on the bed beside his belongings. She and Will had read every letter many times. She pulled one out of the pile and read it again. Jack had sent this letter from England during his first year away from home.

Dear Mother and Father,

The training is not easy but I don’t mind hard work. You know how I love to learn new things. The men I am training with are good fellows, and I have many new friends.

The apples you sent arrived in a parcel in the mail, along with the chocolate bars and gloves and stockings. Thank you for wrapping each apple in paper. Not one went bad. I was even able to share them with my friends. What a treat to get a great parcel like this from home!

I have to tell you that the apples reminded me of the orchard, and of the rows of healthy trees. I thought of the sun on the blossoms in spring. I thought of the clear air in the fall, and I wished I could be there to help. Father, I hope you were able to hire someone to help with the picking. So many apples, so many trees. How could I ever forget?

Thank you also for knitting stockings for me, Mother. They are a perfect fit and help to keep my feet warm and dry.

Please do not worry about me. I am doing what I want to do. I am careful and I am safe.

Your loving son,

Jack

When Peggy closed her eyes, she thought of planes soaring and darting and looping through the clouds. She tried not to think of Jack falling down, down, down. How she hated the war. If only the fighting and the killing would stop. Then, maybe, she would finally be able to find out where Jack was buried. His body had to be somewhere.

But Peggy also knew that she would never board a ship in Halifax to sail across the Atlantic Ocean. She would never see Jack’s grave. Her son might not even have a grave, and that was the worst thing of all. Not knowing if Jack’s body had been buried.

Peggy decided to ask Will to write to the War Office to find out if there was any more news. If only they could find out even one detail about Jack’s death. But this would probably never happen. Even so, the war had to be over soon. It had to be.

Nova Scotia

World War I ended in November 1918. The fighting stopped at eleven o’clock in the morning on the eleventh day of the eleventh month. After four years, more than nine million soldiers had died in different parts of the world. Millions more were wounded or missing. No one could have imagined such suffering or such huge losses.

After the war, Jack’s photo stayed on the shelf in the Greenwood kitchen at the apple farm. Medals were now displayed beside the photo. When friends and family came to visit,
they all wanted to see the photo and the medals. Everyone said Jack was a hero, but that did not make his parents feel any better.

Will Greenwood continued to write letters to the War Office. He sent letters again and again, always hoping for news. He wanted to know if Jack’s grave had been found. The reply was always the same. Nothing new was known.

Will truly wondered if Jack’s grave would ever be found. He kept reading about the missing, the millions of soldiers from so many countries who had no graves. He did not even know the name of the place in France where Jack’s plane had crashed. Was it a town? A village? Someone must know. Will decided that he would never give up.

Will learned that a special War Graves office had opened in England, with its head office in London. Later, another office opened in Ottawa because so many Canadian soldiers had no known graves. The Greenwoods weren’t the only ones trying to find out where a beloved son was buried.

Because Will kept writing letters, he received letters in reply. Twice a year, he wrote
to the War Graves office. Twice a year, a man named Mr. Harvey replied.

London, England

Dear Sir,

I have all of your letters here on my desk. The name of your son, Jack Greenwood, is well known to this office. We have tried to locate his grave, but, so far, we have not done so. Finding it will take time, because so many millions of men went missing.

After the war, the Germans gave us their burial lists. If we can match Jack’s name to a name on any of the lists, we will write to you immediately. I am sorry that I have no further news to give you at this time.

Sincerely,

T. S. Harvey

Assistant Secretary

Will was disappointed each time a new letter came from the War Graves office, but he never gave up hope. Maybe Jack’s name would be on one of the German burial lists. Will promised Peggy that he would never stop sending letters. Not until Jack’s grave had been found.

Every year on Jack’s birthday, the first of July, Peggy and Will went upstairs to Jack’s bedroom. They opened the drawer of their son’s dresser and took out his personal belongings. These were all they had from Jack’s time away at the war. The shaving kit. The identity card. The log book. The pile of letters.

The Greenwoods set everything on top of Jack’s bed. They opened the log book, read a few of the letters, and talked about Jack when he had been a small boy. This yearly ritual helped them to remember what a happy child Jack had been, and it helped them with their grief. They returned Jack’s belongings to the drawer, and they did not open it again until the first of July the following year.

1928

Northern France

But what about Luc Caron, the boy living in the small village in northern France? The boy who had been twelve years old when the pilot fell from the sky on March 4, 1917.

Luc was now twenty-three years old. Ten years had passed since the war had ended. The Germans had lost the war, and the soldiers in the village had returned to Germany. The villagers slowly repaired and rebuilt their roads, houses, and shops. Luc was now married, and he and his wife lived in their own small house
in the village. They had a one-year-old baby boy.

From the time Luc had finished school, he had worked on a farm owned by his uncle. The farm was outside the village, not far from where the airplane had crashed. Every morning, Luc got up early and rode his bicycle from his home to the farm. During the winter months, he walked. Few people owned cars, but every family had a bicycle.

Luc worked hard on his uncle’s farm. He loved to be outside, and he loved to drive the team of horses. He loved the smells in the air at haying time, and he enjoyed taking care of the animals. He was suited to farming, and he wanted to stay on the land. To support himself and his family, he was saving money to buy a small farm of his own.

His mother needed his help, too. Mrs. Caron still lived in the small house where Luc had grown up. She kept a few hens and sold eggs. Because she was skilled with a needle and thread, she also sewed to earn extra money. Many people in the village brought cloth to her so she could make them new clothes. She had sewed Luc’s wedding
suit, and she was always making clothes for the baby, her only grandchild.

Luc had never forgotten his hero, the Canadian pilot buried in the graveyard next to the church. Every Sunday after Mass, Luc visited the grave. Every summer for eleven years, he had placed roses below the cross made from the two pieces of propeller.

Luc had told the story of the pilot’s death to his wife and friends. But he was always sorry that he couldn’t share the story with the family of the dead pilot. If only he could meet them. He wanted to tell them about the day Jack Green fell from his plane and crashed to the ice on the pond. Luc felt as if he had become part of the pilot’s story.

The souvenirs Luc had taken from the site of the plane crash were still important to him. Ever since that day, he had kept the strips of canvas and the splinter of wood from the propeller. When the war ended and the Germans left, Luc no longer had to hide anything. He took the items out of the canvas bag and wrapped them in a piece of cloth. Now he kept the bundle on a shelf in his home.

Once a year, on March 4, Luc pulled the bundle off the shelf and opened it. Clumps of dirt still stuck to the strips of canvas, just as they had on the day of the crash. Luc could still read the name and date he had printed on one of the strips. The three items were very dear to Luc. They were part of the dead pilot’s story, but they were part of Luc’s story, too.

One Sunday after Mass, Luc noticed a black car parked on the road outside the church. He knew immediately that it was the car of a stranger.

Luc went around the side of the church to the graveyard. The sun was shining on this beautiful Sunday in May. Trees were in blossom, and flowers lay on some of the graves. He walked towards the grave he knew so well. The name
Jack Green, R.F.C.
was still printed on the roughly made cross. The words on the cross were still clear.