At the grave of Jack Allsopp in France, 2015.
Uncle Jack Allsopp’s walk-on part at the Battle of Passchendaele.
Passchendaele was a word I grew up with because that was where my grandmother's favourite brother died. My grandmother's been gone from this world herself now for more than 50 years, but I can see her plainly in my mind's eye, sitting in her rocking chair in her little fibro housing commission cottage at Glendale, Newcastle, NSW. She didn't talk much to adults about Uncle Jack; maybe because she got more than a bit misty when she thought about him. But she told me, when I was a child at her knee, and she let me…