The Unknown Soldier

One man wondered and worried about his disappeared brother all his life.His granddaughter continued the search. Preksha Sharma resurrects a man and his story

- Preksha Sharma

Cassino War Cemetery at Cassino, Italy, where thousands of Commonwealth servicemen of World War II are buried

This is a story of a quest. It started with my grandfather. He was a quiet and serious man. Life was a solemn matter of fact. Discipline was paramount. And he maintained a British formality with his children and grandchildren. There was a superhuman quality to his self-control that made him the formidable grandparent.

Ours is not a family that shares stories, but we had heard much about the misfortunes of my grandfather from others. He lost his parents when barely a teenager, and his elder brother a few years later. His childhood and youth were spent battling deaths and deprivation. This was trauma that took military training and a lifetime to repress.

My grandfather spent his last years with us in Mumbai. I learnt that nothing is invincible. That all flesh withers, that mental strength is tied to the body. I saw a man whose mind was a rock, crumbling slowly to Alzheimer’s. I also learnt that while the body wilts, unresolved trauma stays. It is the last bone in our body, one that neither burns nor decomposes. It was what my grandfather tenaciously held on to in his twilight years: Where was his brother?

When my grandfather was a teenager, his elder brother left to fight in World War II and never returned. He was last traced to Italy.

Over his life time, my grandfather wrote more than a hundred letters, inquiring about his brother’s whereabouts. Neither brother nor answers arrived. He finally gave up in exhaustion. Life had been gentle and kind just before the end, but often Alzheimer’s and dementia would dislodge him from the present and launch him back to his years of frantic searching. The effort of trying to make sense of memories, chronology and reality left him exhausted. It was cruel. We were helpless.