Joe is still missing. We feel that he is alive. We have not faced the alternative. May says that she will not give up hope until it is absolutely proved without a shadow of a doubt that he was killed in action. We believe we are leading normal lives. People have been most kind. They do not fuss over us. In years to come looking back on these days we may discover that we were not as normal as we thought we were.
Last Sunday night a queer thing happened. A stranger (Alderman Goyette) telephoned me to say that he saw Joe’s picture in the newspaper and he was positive that he was alright. Then he described how Joe had landed in unoccupied France and was being cared for by friends of the Allies. He said if the picture had told him a different story he would not have telephoned me. In any case it was a kindly act.
(PJD 14 February 1942)
This is his birthday. It is a hard day for his mother to go through. There is nothing to be done except wait. (PJD 17 February 1942)
During the wait, letters of sympathy and hope arrived from many parts of Canada and abroad. Duncan Hodgkinson’s mother wrote from England:
I hope by the time you get this our boys will have been found. I can’t think anything else, they had done so many hard trips together, surely they must have thought just what they would do in an emergency such as this. But what I wanted to say was how Duncan used to speak of that boy of yours, cheering them up when in a tight spot & his rendering of songs etc. (5 February 1942)
Caught between hope and desperation, Dan and Monty scoured the country for news. In London, they made inquiries at the Red Cross, the Air Ministry, and RCAF headquarters, and the following week they travelled together to Joe’s station at Coningsby. No new information was forthcoming. Dan wrote to Percy a week later.
One thing [Joe] said to me the last time we were together, if ever I am reported missing be patient for about four weeks and you will be hearing from me direct, which he gave me to understand was the usual time and custom for prisoners of war, so again I say have courage, whilst you have anxious days in front of you do not get downhearted.
(10 February 1942)
Yesterday morning we received a cable from England notifying us that word had been received from Germany that Joe had been killed in action. This was quite a blow because we felt that when the news reached us that Joe was missing there was a good chance that he had baled out safely in Germany or France. This was not to be. There is no wailing in this household. We do not allow people to be sorry for us. We tell them “go and be sorry for those fathers and mothers who have sons who are still with them” because they did not see the issues involved in this war with clear sightedness or did not care. Joe knew what he was fighting for. He did not fight for the British Empire. He fought for a way of life which we believe is the only one worth remaining on this earth for. This way of life has not been fully realized by our peoples but it is the one thousands strive for … a way of life which does not make the individual a slave of the state … he does not live for the state the state is there for him … this way of life is for the weak as well as the strong … the weak to be protected by our laws and law administrators … not to be subject to force of brute strength … this way of life will mean someday God willing that there will be no discrimination between white or black or yellow man … a full freedom of action of speech … a way of life which will not make one man master of another either politically or economically. Leadership there will be but leadership for the benefit of the many not the few. (PJD 22 February 1942)
Of course we cannot realize that anything has happened to Joe. There are times when the stab of our loss is felt and there is that awful and terrible bleak feeling of a finality that nothing on this earth can change. Hardly a day passes without something happening that inspires the thought I must write Joe about that. I know this happens to May too. Nevertheless in our hearts we do not believe that he has gone from this Earth. Our reason tells us that no mistake could have occurred, our hearts still beat with the hope that a miracle could have happened. We do not build on this the way we did when we heard he was missing. Then there was a real chance but we were not to be amongst the lucky ones. However, the feeling will not [go] down and can do us no harm. The hardest thing to bear is when the flood of feeling about Joe, our love for him, his love for us, gives way, as it must from time to time, to the deadly routine of ordinary living and the feeling that nothing is changed, not even ourselves. This feeling does not last too long, thank God, Joe is with us most of the time and when he is with us we are at peace. We want to keep with us until we die the great joy that filled our hearts when we received Joe’s last letter. It completed us. We felt that he had said everything that was to be said. He knew that it might be his last letter to us and sought to make life as full for us as it has been for him. We knew how much we loved him and that we were loved by him with all his dear heart. We are not bitter. Life has been rich and full for us we are determined it will not become mean or thin.
(PJD 7 March 1942)
Condolence letters lamenting the fallen son of a nation at war began arriving within days. Many invoked the values of sacrifice, dedication, and valour, and the hope that these virtues would bring both victory and a better world.
I do trust that with time, you will be helped to see it as a high promotion for your brave, handsome son to the rank of a true hero, worthy of honour and lasting remembrance by his country, and of just pride on the part of his parents and family, until they meet him again.
There is solace in the reflection that he sacrificed his life in the greatest cause in all human history, and that his noble passing must be a great and abiding inspiration to all who knew him …
You can be proud of what Joey has accomplished in his short life – of his loyalty and bravery and of the sacrifice he has made for his King and Country. We hope that it will not be in vain.
All of us will always remember him as a hero and a son worthy of his parents – one who gave everything to preserve all he held dear.
Every person who cherishes freedom but more particularly every Jew owes you a debt of gratitude.
I am firmly convinced that it is better to die fighting than to contemplate living in a world dominated by Hitler and his gang but how much easier it would be to do the fighting oneself than to have to sit back while the ones so dear to us do the job.
Several American friends of the family quoted Lincoln’s famous Civil War condolence letter. Those who knew Joe on the playing field wrote of his character and achievements:
I always admired his sportsmanship and his “grit” which he apparently carried with him in the Air Force in the same manner as he had always done on the playing field.
I have a very vivid memory of that single incident in one of the last of McGill’s championship football games when your fine boy made such a brilliant play and helped so much to win the game. Now, he has done a much more brilliant thing in a more deadly game. … he will be spared most of the miseries and disillusionments of life, having experienced its most vitally happy years.
Joe’s older cousin Harris, then training in the army to go overseas, wrote:
He knew the time had come when every decent citizen was duty bound to fight for all the things we believe in, he saw his duty and seeing it undertook it.
I consider it a privilege to have known such a fine young man; I am proud he was my cousin; had he lived he most certainly would have made an important place for himself, as things turned out we who knew him will always carry his memory and mention his name with reverence. … he had … a magnetic personality that impressed everyone who ever came in contact with him. (25 February 1942)
Clara Bernhardt, with two brothers now in the air force overseas, wrote from Preston:
I do know how a mother feels about these things, and how hard it is to see the boys go. Yet underneath all the anguish, there is an intangible satisfaction too, that they are not content, as so many are doing, to sit passively back and permit someone else to do the job that must be done. (8 Februa
ry 1942)
She attached a poem, “Missing,” that she had written only a month before for another friend.
Clara Lettice wrote from Woodhall Spa:
I feel it as much as though he had been my own son, because we had been so happy together all the time he had been with me. … It seems so hard to understand, why these troubles are sent. I am trying to take it, as I know Joe would wish us, his memory will always be to me a source of strength and inspiration, and I am trying to draw on that to sustain me. I shall always have the happy memory of Joe at Xmas, when we had a few friends in to supper, and the lovely speech he made later in the evening. I gave them as good a time as I possibly could, and both he and Roger thoroughly enjoyed themselves. I shall always feel thankful I had the privilege of knowing two such perfect gentlemen, everyone who came in contact with them loved them … (4 March 1942)
In the latter part of March, Percy and May again spent a few days in Ste. Agathe in the Laurentians.
We came home to find considerable mail. Mail about Joe still comes in. There were several letters returned. These were the letters sent to Joe and received in England after he was missing. The sight of letters that would never be read by him brought home to us like nothing has so far the fact that we will never see Joe again. (PJD 22 March 1942)
Letters still coming in from the other side about Joe. May is brick but I think the fact that we will not see Joe again is beginning to sink in … as time goes on we will not find it any too easy … each warns the other not to indulge in self pity for a minute … to keep of good countenance and be no less brave than Joe was … but it is damned hard sometimes. (PJD 27 March 1942)
Adjutor Savard, whom Joe had met in London, visited the Jacobsons the day he returned to Canada.
He told us as much as he could about Joe. We already know how popular he was but we were particularly pleased by his remark that he found Joe a man of culture with a keen intelligence. We mentioned the fact that we had received several letters criticizing some aspects of Britain’s war effort from him and that we were surprised the letters were allowed to pass by the Censor. He told us that all of them did not pass the censor and that there was quite a batch in the files of RCAF in London.1
(PJD 29 March 1942)
Three weeks later, Percy and May received a letter from Robin Selfe’s wife Winifred, questioning the information from German sources via the International Red Cross that
Sergeants Hodgkinson and Harding and two unidentified other occupants of their aircraft were killed. … What I can’t understand is where Joey’s and Robin’s identity discs were. They are proof against breakage and fire. Also why use the word “occupants.” Surely it is usual to use the word “body” when someone has lost his life.
It is on these two points and the fact that the Germans are liars that I pin my hopes. I do hope this note on the letter has not distressed you. Forgive me if I have raised false hopes.2
Percy commented:
There still seems to be a little mystery about Joe and one of his pals. Evidently neither [has] been completely identified. The Germans reported Joe killed but no particulars. There is of course nothing to build any real hope on. Silly of us to think otherwise. Of course we feel he is still alive, how could we feel otherwise. Different when you see a dear one die before your eyes. Then you know. There is a finality about that that brooks no argument. (PJD 22 April 1942)
The conclusion became more inescapable with each letter, yet the particulars on which it was based remained tantalizingly incomplete and inconsistent. The specifics of the German information received by the Red Cross and forwarded to the Air Ministry were never communicated to the family. But with each revelation that could be interpreted as offering the faintest indication that not all was yet known, their hope could not be entirely extinguished.
Thursday morning during breakfast a telegram came from our Government stating that for official purposes Joe was considered as killed. January 28th was the date given. We both feel that no official proclamation can kill Joe. He is as alive today as ever he was. In any case whether or not the millionth chance occurs and after the war Joe is discovered somewhere in Germany, Joe will live. In a broad sense I do not believe there is any dead. Body is destroyed. No spirit does. Well we feel that about Joey and Peter. French and English papers have been printing Joe’s last letter written before his flight January 28th. This letter is a eulogy of his French Canadian pal Roger Rousseau who Joe believe[d] had been killed but was taken prisoner in Germany. He said that Roger had done more to create good feeling between French and English than all the propagandists in the country. (PJD 30 May 1942)
Joe’s family would learn nothing more of his fate, or how and where he met it, or where he was buried, until after the war ended. Hope diminished, but despondency did not, as Percy recorded many times in the following years.
Thinking what would happen after the war if Joe had been alright. I promised in one of my letters he would not have come into the business unless he absolutely wanted to. … I know that there are some who think that the fact there is no one to carry on my business is of serious concern to me. It is not. My business has been a means to an end … a living. I have no love for the business in the sense that some men have. I always wanted Joe to lead a fuller life than I have. A life with more freedom. There would have been a year of travel in Canada for him, then some sort of leadership in regard to rehabilitation, and possibly an outlet for that crusading spirit against injustice and privilege which was his great concern during the past several months. (PJD 27 June 1942)
A silver cross from the government came yesterday.3 It was addressed to May but I have not given it to her yet. It has Joe’s name and is in commemoration of his sacrifice for his country. It means that officially Joe is now declared dead. It is insane on our part to still desperately cling to the chance that the Germans either have lied or are fooled. But we still cannot help feeling that way although our reason gives such a conjecture thumbs down. Somehow, the last two weeks have been more difficult than the period immediately after our bad news. (PJD 10 July 1942)
Last night dreamt the first really vivid dream, of Joe since the day in January when he was reported missing. I saw him clearly, spoke to him and put my arm around his shoulders. I tried to hold him. Peter was there also. (PJD 7 August 1943)
For the life of me I cannot feel that Joe is not on this earth. I cannot understand why I should still be so sure that he is alive. My reason and my feelings are at war. I know his mother feels exactly the same way. Until we see the grave he is buried [in] or the war has been over for at least a year I am sure that this feeling will persist. In the meanwhile there is Joe’s estate to be wound up. I have been putting this off and off. (PJD 12 September 1942)
Today was sent by the Government a form to fill out for settling of Joe’s estate. This business, and there will be more of the same sort of thing for some time to come, is difficult for me because I am not yet reconciled to the fact that Joe has actually gone. … I do not take these matters up with May until the need arises. It will arise because in a few months the estate will be wound up and she will have papers to sign.
(PJD 29 September 1942)
Of all the official correspondence that followed the first dreaded telegram, the statement of official presumption of death was the harshest. For the authorities, it was an administrative decision required to wind up the casualty’s estate and calculate his family’s entitlements. For the family, it meant that their country could no longer offer any hope for them. They were left to grasp whatever slim reed of hope they could find, without aid. Some families resisted the decision and refused to accept it, although they could do nothing to reverse it.
Armistice day. … My own feelings mixed. I think Remembrance Day the better term. I am still not willing to count Joe as lost so did not or could not make the day as of special personal significance. Common sense tells me I am foolish to hang on to this thread of hope and I know that when the boys come home it will be
harder than if I would accept the inevitable now. (PJD 11 November 1943)
… I find myself very much like the man who has become resigned to functioning in a somewhat crippled condition. Soon I may even forget I am a cripple in the sense of losing two sons. I do not grieve, I do not seem to be able to feel the reflected glory of being Joe’s father which helped me so much the first year of his loss. (PJD 9 January 1944)
Joe’s room remained exactly as he had left it. His mother could not bear to alter it, in case by a miracle he should return. A year later, May found Joe’s first diary, from 1936, in his desk drawer. Neither she nor Percy had ever seen it, and its contents were both a stunning reminder and a revelation.
Joey Jacobson's War Page 37