Jack's body has never been found (see the book of the same name as the film/play, which is an investigation into this case). There was the suggestion that his grave had been identified in 1992; but the body (still unknown), although an Irish Guards officer, was of a lieutenant and was found 6,000 yards away from the last place Jack was sighted alive. Jack was only a 2nd Lieutenant at the time of his death, although, as he was first posted 'missing', he was breveted 1st Lieutenant after his death. There is a difference. Also, only 2,000 yards' depth of enemy line was captured, so a 3 1/2 mile difference in any direction is too much!
The errant grave still bears Jack's name; sadly, the truth is likely that he'll never be found, like so many other boys of WWI...
reply
share
pfdocwilson
16 years ago
Jack's body has never been found (see the book of the same name as the film/play, which is an investigation into this case).
The book
My Boy Jack was written by Tonie Holt and Valmai Holt, who are also authors of
Major and Mrs. Holt's Guides, an excellent series of guides to battlefields of World Wars I and II. IIRC, it was the inspiration for the play.
reply
share
williesutt
16 years ago
Yes, sadly the jury is still out on this one. Some are confident that the body is Jack Kipling's, but the evidence to support the claim is a little suspect. Everything revolves around the accuracy of the records prepared by the soldiers who were tasked with the job of recovering bodies from the battlefield after the war was over. CSI it was not! Kipling's body would have been lying in the mud for the best part of four years and I doubt that the soldiers recovering it would have lingered in their task so as to examine the body in detail. No details were provided by the recovery party of their reason for concluding that the body was that of a lieutenant in the Irish Guards. I suspect there were buttons still present on the remains of the uniform (buttons of Irish Guardsmen have a unique design and arrangement). I don't think much store should be set by the description of the body as being of a 'lieutenant' rather than 'second lieutenant', because it is common UK military parlance to address the 'half-rank' in the same way as the 'substantive rank'.eg one addresses a lance corporal as 'Corporal', not 'Lance Corporal' (You soon find out if you get it wrong!) So a soldier filling out a body recovery form is likely to write down 'lieutenant' instead of 'second lieutenant'. A further complicating factor is that the Guards units wore a 'star' on their epaulettes and this could have been confused with a 'pip'. (I believe the Guards were the only units to wear their ranks on their shoulder boards at this stage of the war; the usual practice was to wear the rank on the lower sleeve - an expert will put me right on this one!)
I hope the mystery is solved one day...
reply
share