Kipling's Choice (13 page)

 

BUT THERE ARE A FEW FOR WHOM THERE IS NO REMEMBRANCE,
AND THEY PERISH AS THOUGH THEY HAD NEVER EXISTED,
AS IF THEY HAD NEVER BEEN BORN.

 

In the summer of 1920, Kipling combined one of his regular vacations to France with his work for the Imperial War Graves Commission. Together with Carrie, he toured the battlefields. They visited Loos, taking with them maps and notes from their interviews of soldiers. They found nothing.

A year later they organized one last systematic search in the same area. The Kiplings hoped for a small miracle. Once again their efforts were fruitless.

In 1922, Rudyard accompanied King George V and Queen Mary on their pilgrimage to the battlefields. They rode through Vlamertinge, Ypres, and Poperinge, and they visited the Somme Valley. From there Rudyard continued on alone to Loos. This time he was bowled over by the changes there. "The road, the area where John disappeared, Chalk Pit and Red House ... are so smoothed out that they are unrecognizable," he noted, disillusioned.

The trails had been wiped out. There was absolutely no hope of finding John.

On August 4, 1930, Rudyard and Carrie traveled to France together one last time. They attended the dedication of the Loos Memorial. Inscribed on a long wall at Dud Corner Cemetery were the names of countless British soldiers who died in the area but had no grave. One name carved in the wall received their special attention: Lieutenant John Kipling.

In 1992, the inspectors of the War Graves Commission made a very peculiar discovery: The body of an unknown lieutenant in the Irish Guards buried at the Saint Marys Dressing Station in Haisnes (near Loos) is that of the eighteen-year-old John Kipling. Even though some doubted the truth of this discovery, the gravestone finally got a name.

But by this time Rudyard Kipling had been dead for years. He had passed away in 1936, a broken man.

Holt, Tonie and Valmai.
My Boy Jack?
Yorkshire: Pen & Sword Books, 1998.

 

Lycett, Andrew.
Rudyard Kipling.
London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1999.