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Authors: James Douglas
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of which was still evident in the ragged edges of pages torn from the spine of the journal. Jamie found himself mirroring the pain Matthew must have felt in that moment when his fingers had brutally removed the evidence of the final months of the affair. The next entry might have provided some kind of explanation, but it had been written by a man either drunk to the brink of insensibility or distressed beyond despair. Words had not been written, they had been smashed into the page, only to be scored out with enough force to tear through the three following pages, or smudged by some liquid whose origin Jamie could only guess at. But if the words were unreadable, the emotion Matthew Sinclair was expressing in his savage frenzy was clear. Hatred. A murderous unquenchable, all-consuming hunger for revenge.
Two days later he had requested a transfer to the Commandos.
The Commando special service brigades were born out of Churchill’s impatience at being unable to retaliate at the Nazis poised on France’s Channel coast. Thousands of men from the remnant saved at Dunkirk volunteered for the chance to get their own back and by 1941 the unfit and the unsuitable had been weeded out at secret camps in the Highlands by the toughest training regime in the British army. Now they were an élite service, ready to fulfil the prime minister’s vow to ‘set Europe ablaze’ and the perfect haven for a man bent on bloody murder or getting himself killed. Yet Matthew’s time with the Commandos was short-lived and characterized by frustration, self-pity and heavy drinking that was evident in the number of pages stained by the bottom of a glass. Whilst Matthew fretted to get at the enemy, Churchill limited Commando incursions to pinprick operations for which he was never chosen. By August his patience had run out and he volunteered for a new and untried outfit called the Special Air Service, then operating in North Africa. Jamie had the impression Matthew’s superiors were glad to see him go. You had to be even crazier to volunteer for the SAS than the Commandos.
Disappointingly, it rapidly became clear that his secretive new employers were a great deal more stringent about diary keeping than the regulars. Between August 1941 and October 1944 the journal contained a single entry – a cryptic reminder, at the end of 1943, for an appointment:
M suggests meeting at Baker Street re: Jedburgh after I’ve knocked the sand from my boots. 10 a.m. Sounds interesting
.
The war ground towards its inevitable end, with the Nazis squeezed between the twin jaws of the Allied forces and the Red Army. Now the regular entries resumed. Lieutenant Sinclair had been promoted to captain and placed on light duties as a liaison officer in northern Holland, and then in Germany where his fluency in the language would have been invaluable. No mention of Stan, but Jamie had an image of him looming in the background, a permanent reminder that war was no laughing matter. He flicked over the following pages until he reached the entry for 1 May 1945.
News of Hitler’s death came through this morning when we were close to Leipzig, where we are working with Patton’s Third Army. There is a feeling that it is all over and that we will soon be going home. I suffer it as much as anyone, but I must ensure the men don’t drop their guard. It would be stupid to get yourself killed now, after all we’ve been through
.
Jamie lay back and closed his eyes. Reading the journal had affected him like no other book had. When he’d started, it had been in the hope that it would bring him closer to the grandfather he’d never truly known. Yet he found he still had more questions than answers. There was anger, too, real anger, at the true scale of their deceit. He knew it was selfish, but he felt that Matthew and his mother had not only robbed him of a hero, but of a father figure who might have shaped his identity in a different way, perhaps even changed the course of his
Two days later he had requested a transfer to the Commandos.
The Commando special service brigades were born out of Churchill’s impatience at being unable to retaliate at the Nazis poised on France’s Channel coast. Thousands of men from the remnant saved at Dunkirk volunteered for the chance to get their own back and by 1941 the unfit and the unsuitable had been weeded out at secret camps in the Highlands by the toughest training regime in the British army. Now they were an élite service, ready to fulfil the prime minister’s vow to ‘set Europe ablaze’ and the perfect haven for a man bent on bloody murder or getting himself killed. Yet Matthew’s time with the Commandos was short-lived and characterized by frustration, self-pity and heavy drinking that was evident in the number of pages stained by the bottom of a glass. Whilst Matthew fretted to get at the enemy, Churchill limited Commando incursions to pinprick operations for which he was never chosen. By August his patience had run out and he volunteered for a new and untried outfit called the Special Air Service, then operating in North Africa. Jamie had the impression Matthew’s superiors were glad to see him go. You had to be even crazier to volunteer for the SAS than the Commandos.
Disappointingly, it rapidly became clear that his secretive new employers were a great deal more stringent about diary keeping than the regulars. Between August 1941 and October 1944 the journal contained a single entry – a cryptic reminder, at the end of 1943, for an appointment:
M suggests meeting at Baker Street re: Jedburgh after I’ve knocked the sand from my boots. 10 a.m. Sounds interesting
.
The war ground towards its inevitable end, with the Nazis squeezed between the twin jaws of the Allied forces and the Red Army. Now the regular entries resumed. Lieutenant Sinclair had been promoted to captain and placed on light duties as a liaison officer in northern Holland, and then in Germany where his fluency in the language would have been invaluable. No mention of Stan, but Jamie had an image of him looming in the background, a permanent reminder that war was no laughing matter. He flicked over the following pages until he reached the entry for 1 May 1945.
News of Hitler’s death came through this morning when we were close to Leipzig, where we are working with Patton’s Third Army. There is a feeling that it is all over and that we will soon be going home. I suffer it as much as anyone, but I must ensure the men don’t drop their guard. It would be stupid to get yourself killed now, after all we’ve been through
.
Jamie lay back and closed his eyes. Reading the journal had affected him like no other book had. When he’d started, it had been in the hope that it would bring him closer to the grandfather he’d never truly known. Yet he found he still had more questions than answers. There was anger, too, real anger, at the true scale of their deceit. He knew it was selfish, but he felt that Matthew and his mother had not only robbed him of a hero, but of a father figure who might have shaped his identity in a different way, perhaps even changed the course of his
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