A MOURNING Northwich father's 14-year desperate search for answers over his son's death and resting place after the First World War is among the moving stories revealed in archives being made public for the first time.
The Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC) will provide online access to more than 1,000 'enquiry files' that record its correspondence with families looking for the location of fallen soldiers following the end of the conflict.
Their appeals for information on lost loved ones are told through the previously unpublished set of letters, typed memos, photos, maps and diagrams which are now available on the CWGC's website from this week.
One cache of documents uncovers how the father of 21-year-old Second Lieutenant Alan Malcolm spent years trying find his eldest son's final resting place on the Belgian battlefields.
At 4.30 a.m. on 17 May 1918, Capt. Ralph Bell and his observer, Lt Alan Malcolm took off in their single-engined biplane to make a high-level reconnaissance flight over the lines in Belgium. They never returned.
It was Bell’s 32nd birthday. Born in Richmond, UK, by the time the First World War began he was married and working as a journalist in Toronto, Canada, for The Globe newspaper. He volunteered to join the Canadian Expeditionary Force within weeks of war starting, shipping out for Europe in early October 1914 with an infantry battalion. He joined the Royal Flying Corps in April 1917, training as a pilot in Reading, UK, then joining a squadron on the Western Front.
Lt Alan Alexander Malcolm, known as ‘Alec’ at school, had been 21 for three months when he climbed into their DH.9 behind Bell in the chilly, pre-dawn air. Born in Mauritius, where his father was General Manager and Chief Engineer for a forge and foundry in Port Louis, he was the eldest of three boys. By 1909 the family had returned to the UK and he and his next youngest brother were attending Gresham’s School in Norfolk, playing sprites in A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
Lt Alan Alex Malcolm in his school days
Alec left school at Easter in 1914 to begin to train as an engineer like his father. In 1915 he joined the Cheshire Yeomanry, receiving a nomination for Sandhurst in 1916. In January 1917, the month he turned 20, he left for France with the 17th Lancers as a Second Lieutenant. Like many young men, he was fascinated by aeroplanes, and must have been excited to be accepted by the RFC to serve as an observer in October that year. Six months later, he was missing on patrol.
His squadron’s chaplain wrote ‘he was not merely a brave, gallant and keen young officer, but a thorough, out and out gentleman.’ His father wanted answers.
File CCM 15160 in the CWGC archive centres around an eight-year quest by George William Malcolm, Alan Alexander ‘Alec’ Malcolm’s father, for his son’s fate and final resting place. The file contains multiple enquiries from Mr Malcolm to the DGRE as to the possible whereabouts of his son’s grave and details the DGRE’s considerable efforts to investigate the case.
Captain Ralph Bell, who died alongside Lt Malcolm
His death was not confirmed until December, and the following year his father George Malcolm, from Northwich, began writing to the newly formed Imperial War Graves Commission (IWGC), as the CWGC was initially known, for help pinpointing where his son fell.
But searches of the battlefield produced no clues and in desperation Mr Malcolm took out an advertisement in the German press appealing for help.
He received more than 70 replies from former German soldiers, some providing maps of the crash site and some claiming to have buried his son.
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Sharing the information with the IWGC, he wrote: "I am bound to say to the honour of the numerous Germans who have replied, I have had a number of answers, and many in a kindly strain".
But the search ultimately proved in vain, and in 1932 in the final correspondence between Mr Malcolm and the Commission, Mr Malcolm received two tickets, as requested, to the unveiling of the Arras Flying Services Memorial in France, where his son and his pilot, Captain Ralph Bell, are remembered.
He finally saw his son’s name carved in stone in July 1932, 14 years after the cable breaking the news that he was missing in action.
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