Do you remember Em, Jack?

My mother’s great aunt. Your sister. I was six when she died. She was barely taller than I was then: a tiny, delicate creature, so dainty, so refined. Yet out of that birdlike frame would erupt a foghorn laugh. Something would set her off and she’d be convulsed by it, whole body rocking, shoulders shaking, the tears running down her cheeks. I loved the way Auntie Em could laugh.

She wasn’t laughing when she met you in the street the day war was declared. You: jaunty, bursting with excitement. Telling her you’d been to the Recruiting Office. First man in Truro to sign up. No, Em wasn’t laughing, that day. She was angry. So angry she could barely speak. “Jack, how could you? You have a wife. Four young children!”

“Don’t worry, Em,” you said. “It will all be over by Christmas.”

Did you really believe that?

You were never one to suffer fools, they said. You were no bootlicker, no respecter of rank or position. You didn’t kowtow to anyone. You gave respect only to those who deserved it, and there were precious few of those.

Do you remember when the Boer War started? 1899. You were working in Johannesburg: a Cornish mining engineer, with friends from every conceivable background. You refused to fight back then: said the war had been created by politicians, that it was being waged against defenceless women and children, that we should be ashamed of ourselves. When you came back to England you wouldn’t keep your mouth shut. Do you remember the arguments, the scuffles, the fights? Unpatriotic, they called you. Disloyal to Queen and Country. Did you care? No, you just carried on shooting your mouth off. You were never one to fall for propaganda.

So why did you?

After the Boer War, you married and you went back to Africa. The railways had been destroyed, your new wife had to ride side-saddle from Cape Town to Swaziland. Your children were born there. She wanted to stay but no, you had itchy feet. One morning you loaded your four children into an ox cart and brought the family back home.

Itchy feet. That was the other thing about you. You could never stay still for long, could you?

Was that what made you sign up? A wife. Four children. Had life got too settled? Too predictable? Did you want one last adventure before you were claimed by carpet slippers, an easy chair, a pipe?

“All over by Christmas,” you said. And it was, for you.

John Edward Avery. Your name’s there – right at the top.

First man in Truro to sign up. First man in Truro to die.

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