Billy MacTold
Devotees of the famous Boy Wizard will know this, but for those who don’t: Harry Potter has donned a soldier’s uniform and gone to war.
Daniel Radcliffe, aka young Potter of those magical incantations and battler of the forces of metaphysical evil, has just starred in his first television movie in the UK, called My Boy Jack, recounting the World War One death of the son of literary master Rudyard Kipling.
Second-Lieutenant John Kipling, of the Irish Guards, and just turned 18 (coincidentally, Radcliffe is the same age), was fatally wounded by an exploding shell late September, 1915, in north-eastern France in what became known as the Battle of Loos, a major British offensive on the Western Front. His body was never found; the death toll there was greater than any previous battle had been.
The multi-million pound, two-hour film, was made by British television’s ITV and screened there last Sunday for the Remembrance Day observances. It also coincided with the opening of an Imperial War Museum exhibition on John Kipling.
Some film scenes were taped at the Kipling family’s East Sussex home, where John’s initials are still visible where he scratched them into the archway above the front door.
Harry Potter (sorry, Daniel Radcliffe) reportedly gave a haunting, powerful performance as the lost solider – a far cry from Hogwarts, but proof that he’s maturing into a fine actor.
Rudyard Kipling, poet, short story writer, novelist, author of the classics The Jungle Book, Just So Stories and If, and the world’s youngest Nobel literary laureate (in 1907), was an arch imperialist, a strong advocate of the youth of his country proving manhood through war service.
He drove John hard to go (indeed, his son was eager to) despite him being, like his father, short-sighted, with eyesight so bad that even with thick glasses he couldn’t read the second letter on his optician’s chart. He was refused entry into the forces three times.
Kipling wouldn’t accept this, and from close friendship with Lord Roberts, Commander-in-Chief of the British Army, was able to get John a commission. He died on September 27, 1915, on just his second day on the frontline.
His death had an enduring sequel for his father, who had gone to France at the same time to report on the war for the Daily Telegraph newspaper. He had written If for his son when John was 12, and with the anguish of losing him wrote the eulogy My Boy Jack, from which the film took its title.
Kipling and his wife refused to give up hope that John might have survived, waging a three-year campaign to find him, interviewing witnesses, seeking other people who could help, and even having leaflets dropped over enemy lines.
Kipling still considered it right for England to be at war, yet he didn’t flinch from doing what he could to remember those who died.
He was a founding member of the War Graves Commission, which sought to have every fallen soldier have a marked grave with its own headstone. Sadly, it was something he couldn’t do for his own son – his name is engraved on the Loos Memorial Wall. Kipling paid the head gardener to have the Last Post sounded every night in honour of John.
Kipling also helped place the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Westminster Abbey, and chose inscriptions still used in British war cemeteries, including “Their Name Liveth For Evermore”.
Today’s Commonwealth War Graves Commission, of which Australia is an integral member, is responsible for 1.7 million war graves in 150 countries.
