When I was staying with the in-laws in New Plymouth, New Zealand throughout my last trimester of pregnancy waiting to pop, I get to know a lot about my other family, The Beecheys.  With all the hormones going mad, it was quite a highly emotional time for me. The ups and down were somewhat felt quite extreme. Although most of the time we spent the day giggling or laughing till tears rolled down our cheeks. The kitchen seems to be “the place” to hang around. It was such a cozy place. I could picture it clearly in my mind dad swivels around in his chair and (or while) doing his important work — or plays solitaire (that, is also important  *peace, Dad* ) and Helen puts out her stewing pan cooking something yummy for dinner. I would usually stick out my head outside the kitchen window calling for DB the neighbor cat — which had become a regular guest in the house.

One day Dad showed me a book that he was reading. Brothers in War. A true story about 8 of the Beechey brothers sent to WW1 to the battlefields in France, Flanders and East Africa. Out of 8 brothers, only 3 made it back home. It was quite a horrific story, really, from a mother’s perspective having to receive such news about her boys.

Apparently the Beechey family in that book is still related to our Beechey family. I was reading half way through it until one night disrupted by an excruciating pain in the lower belly. Baby time!  Dad is now on a mission to trace the missing link in the family. He’s been making contacts and phone calls to every Beechey and put all the information into a family tree.

….Book about the Beechey family with eight boys and five girls. By the end, all the boys had gone to war. Some boys enlisted, some were conscripted, some were strongly anti-war but still were called up and served. The boys wrote letters home telling, in the most vivid way imaginable, of their lives on the battlefields. One of the boys, Chris, became an Anzac, fought at Gallipoli, was shot by a Turkish sniper, but lived to the age of 85 and was buried in Western Australia….. (Source from Sydney Morning Herald)

Edie, the Beecheys’ youngest sister, does not forget. She keeps all their letters in a small brown case, which is eventually handed down to her daughter. On a May bank holiday in 2002, the battered old case of heart-rending memories is rescued from a loft in Devon. The rusting hinges snap open to reveal bundles of papers held together by rubber bands, perished with age. Pick one up and the elastic disintegrates. Out drops a yellowing envelope with the words ‘Killed in action’ scrawled across it. From hundreds of letters written on any scrap of paper a son in the firing line or on his deathbed could find, from family snapshots and photos of brave young men in uniform, emerges the story of the lost Beechey boys.

In April 1918, wearing a new hat that might have been borrowed from a Tower of London beefeater, Amy is presented to King George V and Queen Mary as the mother who lost five sons. She is thanked for her sacrifice while the army prepares to send her youngest boy, still a teenager, to war. In 1918, there was none of the compassion that famously saved ‘Private Ryan’ a generation later.

From the other side of the world, the half-crippled Chris Beechey appeals to his mother and sister Edie for help in setting down the family’s war record. In the end, it is too painful. The annual Anzac Day service in Perth is also too much to bear so Chris stops going. Instead, as the sun rises and The Last Post echoes on the breeze, he sits in his rocking chair on the verandah remembering his brothers and the times before war took them …

BARNARD, or Bar, is the genius of the family whose teaching career is wrecked by drink.

CHARLES, or Char, is a schoolmaster straight out of ‘Mr Chips’. Handed a telegram about a brother killed in action, he reads it, tucks it in his pocket and continues with his lesson.

LEN is a penniless clerk who marries to try to avoid call-up.

CHRIS is a born fighter – his father finds him with two black eyes when he visits his school. In 1910 he seeks his fortune in Western Australia.

He is joined by HAROLD, a mix of Boy’s Own hero and sensitive soul who loved to shin up a rope ladder, Tarzan-like, to his bedroom and sobs after shooting a robin with his airgun.

FRANK, with a weakness for girls and motorcycles, is saved from a rash engagement when war breaks out.
‘You will have one of us come home to you, dear mother,’ ERIC Beechey tells Amy when news of the loss of another brother reaches him while serving as an army dentist in Salonika.

Finally, SAM, the baby of the family, has to survive the last three weeks of the war as a junior officer on the Western Front.