MIA

Who is this?

Rae. He was a pilot. He was killed in Italy in World War Two. 24.

A plane crash?

Missing in action. One night I woke up. Suddenly. I had his photo on my bedside table. And I happened to look at his photo and all the light had gone out of his eyes and I knew. I just KNEW, something had happened.

When was this?

1943. I was at med school at the time. In the dorm. It wasn’t until six months later that we heard anything. That he was missing. And when I looked in my diary I realised that the night I woke up suddenly was the exact night he went missing, 24th November, 1943.

How did it happen?

He was at the end of his missions and due to fly home and one night someone went sick so Rae volunteered to do one last run from Cairo up to northern Italy to bomb factories in Turin. Atrocious weather. They should never have taken off. The plane crashed near a village called Bardi in the Appenines. Only a third of the planes on that raid returned.

How did you find out?

We never knew what had happened until a few years ago when my nephew went to Italy and visited a military cemetery in Milan and found his grave. He talked to a lot of people and found out what had happened.

The American military has a military department that finds and brings home MIAs.

It’s too late for that in Rae’s case. I’m the only one in the family of five left and anyway, there is no family grave. It's better he remain where his is, undisturbed.