My Uncle Jackie
Jim Finnie
I want to tell you about my Uncle Jackie. I think people should know about him. He died almost 10 years to the day before I was born and so I never got to know him. Uncle Jackie was the middle of five children, born in 1915. He had an older sister and brother, and he had two younger brothers; my Dad was Jackies youngest brother. The children all lived in a tenement flat in Gillespie Crescent in Edinburgh with my grandparents. My gran and grandpa were from the rural north-east of Scotland and they had come to Edinburgh to make a family and a life together.
My family didnt talk a lot about Uncle Jackie. He was by all accounts a typical young Edinburgh laddie, enjoying the company of his sister, brothers and friends, getting into all sorts of scrapes, loving to kick a ball about on The Meadows close to where the family lived and dreaming of his future. Jackie was clever. He did well at Boroughmuir School and he went on to qualify as a Chartered Accountant. Only he never really got started. The family was doing well in spite of the austerity of the 1930s, and then in 1939 the war came. All four brothers were called up and went their separate ways into the breach, leaving a mother, father and sister behind worried sick about how the boys would fare. My Uncle Harry was 26, Uncle Jackie was 24, Uncle Willie was 22 and my Dad was 17.
The lads came back when they could on their leave and they experienced the relief of escape from the front, and the joy of being reunited with their closest loved ones and whatever friends might happen to be back in Edinburgh. Once home, for however short a period, they no doubt wondered if it was all a horrible dream and if theyd ever get back to their normal lives.
This continued sporadically until one day later in 1942. My granny answered a knock at the door, a scenario no doubt played over in her head in a thousand nightmares, and took from a solemn-looking postman an envelope bordered in the dreaded black. Uncle Jackie was dead. A member of the Cameron Highland Regiment, 5th Battalion, he had been killed in action at El Alamein on 2 November. The battle started on 23 October and went on until 5 November. In two weeks of living hell 13,500 Allied soldiers lost their lives and on the Axis side some 50,000 were killed. Tens of thousands were wounded and maimed.
As a youngster I was told about Jackie and it had little effect at the time. Because I never knew him Uncle Jackie was only a name and the fact was he had been killed in the war. As I have got older, I have increasingly thought about Jackie and a couple of years back I looked a bit more into El Alamein. The first shocking fact is that, when the artillery began firing from both sides, the noise was reckoned to be greater than anything that had ever been heard before. It must have been utterly terrifying. Conditions were appalling, with intense heat during the day and bitter cold at night. The shelling went on 24 hours a day. The sand and dust made breathing, let alone seeing, difficult. There were all manner of insects and vermin and logistical communication was bad. A lot of Allied casualties were blue on blue or self-inflicted. Towards the end of the battle Rommel had informed Hitler that The Axis situation was hopeless and sought permission to withdraw. Hitler refused, at once consigning goodness knows how many more to death and appalling injury. Churchill meanwhile considered that this battle was crucial in determining relative fates in the war. To win El Alamein would secure the Suez Canal and critical oil supplies. Churchill privately told Montgomery, the Allied commander, that 100% casualties would be acceptable as long as the battle was won. Its just as well that the families of those at El Alamein wouldnt know this.
In the event the battle was won and it served the strategic imperative. A huge amount was lost, including my Uncle Jackie. It was the day I found out about some of the horrors of the battle, however, that I realised that Uncle Jackie was a true hero in every sense of the word. It sounds inadequately trite, but he never fulfilled his potential, nor had the pleasure of living his life so that we all got the chance to fulfil and live ours. Ive always wanted to know more about Uncle Jackie, but it was difficult with the family because I think they were just too upset to talk about him.
His name appears in one of the books at Edinburgh Castle commemorating those who lost their lives in the service of their country, but Uncle Jackie deserves more, and I want his memory to remain alive. The sentiment is reflected in the Cameronian regimental gaelic maxim:
Cuimhnichibh na suinn nach maireann. Mairidh an cliu beo gu brath.
In memory of the Heroes who are no more. May their Fame live on forever.
