“To my Dad….”

A brief, heavy-hearted note, penned in tidy block letters, just last week.

“...you are loved, often in my thoughts, and always in my heart.” And it’s signed off by: “a daughter you never knew”.

That makes it an ANZAC story as intriguing as it is sad.

‘Daughter’ is Katikati’s 84-years-old Joan Allan. And ‘Dad’ – Lance Bombardier John Douglas, known as ‘Doug’, Kennedy – who lies in a WW2 military cemetery in Egypt, killed July 1942.

Sadly, Joan’s message will never be read by the man it’s intended for. It doesn’t matter – the spirit is there, and the sentiment is good for the soul.

“I often have a strong feeling of Dad’s presence around me. I felt it and was compelled to write the note.”

Perhaps then, it might be read.

Joan never knew her Dad because she was just two months old when he volunteered to go fight the Axis evil, to fight Hitler’s war in North Africa.  

“He probably got to hold me, cuddle me, love me before he went to war. But of course I didn’t know about it. I was a baby.”

Lance Bombardier Doug Kennedy died in the savage and cruel Battle of Ruweisat Ridge, where Allies stalled Rommel’s advancing Afrika Korps in their drive towards Suez. It was the precursor and deciding factor in the climactic battle of El Alamein.

“Doug Kennedy, service number 20914,” Joan says off the top of her head. She has no memories of the man, but a service number is etched.

”I cried myself to sleep so many times,” says Joan. “I had no Dad to steer me down life’s path, no Dad to see me marry and give me away, no grandad for my children to know and love. It had a huge impact.”

The “To my Dad” note was an afterthought, a moment of inspiration, as Joan jotted some notes to assist this SunLive ANZAC Day story. It encapsulates a lifelong story of heartache and hurt in just two lines.

“It is not so much those who are killed in war that are the victims – they’re dead and gone – but those that are left behind. They have to go through life with all the baggage, the loss, the grief, the hurt… the ‘what might have been’.”

Most who lost fathers, husbands, brothers and sons in the deserts and trenches of WW2 had memories to serve their sense of identity and purpose and happiness. Joan had no memories.

“No Dad to love me, take me to school, hold my hand, listen to me read without being hit on the head for making a mistake.”

She suspects many young people today will relate to her story. But at the time Joan was growing up she knew she was different. She felt different. “The funny thing is, all through my school life I told people my Dad was killed during WW2 – but no-one ever came back and said to me my Dad was too.” She was different and it hurt.

Some things were just not talked about. And, she says, it wasn’t helped by an abusive stepfather. “I wasn’t allowed to ask about my real father. And the stepfather unfortunately destroyed a lot of the letters Dad wrote to my mother.”

But Joan would sneak into her mother’s wardrobe and “read stuff” – nice things “Dad” would write about Joan and her sister in letters home.

“Like how is Joan doing? Get Joan to write to me. I was only two-and-a-half at the time. But it was nice.”

But what of the man? Has Joan formulate some thoughts about the 30-year-old defender of King and country staring out at us from a photo of 84 years ago. A fresh faced soldier, cheeky grin, haunting deep set eyes and sharp chiselled features. The Dad she never knew.

“Not a huge man, 5ft 10in perhaps, blue eyes and fair hair.” But what stirred the man? What made him tick? After her stepfather died, Joan was able to sit down with her Mum and finally speak about the unspoken.

“He was a good man, quite a caring man and he was very artistic, very good at drawing.” The man is gone, but the genes flourish.

“I do a lot of needlework, my youngest daughter does woodwork as did my father, my late son was a sign writer and my older son is a graphic artist. So the art thing has flowed through the family.

What wasn’t so artful was the manner in which Joan’s Mum learned of her husband’s death on Ruweisat Ridge 82 years ago. She had been on holiday and came home to a letter. From Buckingham Palace. From King George VI.

“The Queen and I offer our heartfelt sympathy in your great sorrow. We pray your country’s gratitude for a life so nobly given in its service may bring you some measure of consolation. George RI.”

Nothing else. Just that. Bald, official, off-hand. “Was that the best they could do?” asks Joan. “For someone who’s given their life?” She can only presume her mother was desperately upset at the news.         

Doug was one of four brothers who went off to war. They featured in a Christchurch newspaper story headlined: “Fighting Family”. Doug was the only one not to come home.

Joan stops, reflects and offers half a smile. “Words could never fully explain the impact of growing up without a father.” The father she never knew.

That’s why she gets a tad dismissive when she hears younger generations suggesting her generation had it easy.

“Well, we didn’t.”