What's in a Name?

"Somebody always has to be the last one," remarked a retired RAF officer to me at a dinner party in the fall of 1995. He was a dapper man, with a striped silk ascot, starched cotton shirt, and fine wool trousers, and his smart outfit was exceeded only by his self-confidence, which seemed to be based about equally on his success since taking early retirement and on his son"s exploits as an astronaut. Hearing him mention his former profession, I had made conversation by offering a brief account of my uncle's death in a B26 medium bomber over Yugoslavia on May 4, 1945, just four days before the end of the war. Hence the officer"s remark.

It was probably just as well for our conversation that I did not then know other ironies attending the death of Sgt. John Cox, RAF, because of the remarkable contrast they made with the fulfilled life and intergenerational success of my dinner companion. Eventually I learned that the raid on which my uncle died was his squadron"s last operational mission of the war; that his plane was one of only two the squadron lost in combat, and the only fatal loss, so the last members of their squadron to die in combat were also the first; that he was on his fiftieth "op" and would have been eligible for reassignment to non-combat duty had he returned. The sense of pointless loss is compounded by the fact that John was only nineteen years old when Marauder bomber HD667 was hit by a well-aimed burst of flak that destroyed the plane's controls, brought it to the ground, and killed everyone on board.

The difference between what I knew at the time of the dinner party and what I know now is a result of a remarkable sequence of events that spanned generations and the boundaries of U.S. and British culture. I had been acquainted with the general facts of my uncle"s untimely death ever since I was old enough to be told that I was named for him. (I was born three months after he died, and he was my father"s little brother--sixteen years younger, to be exact.) Growing up American, I had little curiosity about the distant death of someone from a distant time and place. When an opportunity came along to spend several months on academic leave in England in 1995-96, I decided it was time to find out more. Along with everyone else, I had been thinking a lot about the fiftieth anniversary of the end of the war, which was also the fiftieth anniversary of John"s death. Being in England would give me readier access to records. I thought I might even be able to contact members of his squadron. He would have turned seventy in August, 1995, so survivors could well be living and might still remember. This was a brief opportunity, and it would not return.