Albert Hodkinson, A Great And Ordinary Man

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Friday, I attended a memorial service for Albert Hodkinson. Albert lived next door and was for over 45 years the best neighbor anybody could hope for. We used to have evening chats over the backyard fence about matters both simple and profound.

Here's one thing I learned from him: Navigating your Halifax home from a bombing raid over Berlin, you flew west until you came to the white cliffs of Dover. Then you turned right and flew up the coast until you came to the Thames. Then you turned left and flew upriver until you came to the old Roman road. You turned right and followed it up past York, where your airfield was. It was a hell of a lot easier than using a sextant during a bumpy flight in a prop bomber.

Yes. The man was in the RAF in WWII when it mattered most--"never, many, and much" as Churchill put it. Albert Hodkinson was one of those ordinary men who accomplished extraordinary things, when the future looked darkest, and saved the world from fascist domination. 

Albert's father was a pro football player when he was young. Then WWI came along and trench warfare and a foot injury that ended his dreams forever. Having served as an infantryman, he advised his son to become an airman. Albert wanted to be a pilot but, he was from London's East End and the brass told him, "Only gentlemen get to fly aircraft." So he was made a mechanic. But then, "They ran out of gentlemen," and he was sent out to drop bombs on Germany.

Albert was also a literary man, like me. He wrote story poems about his experiences in the war. They dealt with his doings and those of others, of what it's like to fly out on a bombing mission, and what it's like to fly back from one. My son Sean recorded him reading all 20 of his war poems and posted them on YouTube. At the end of each reading Sean would ask a question or two about what it was like and some of the answers were amazing.

Afterward, Sean said, "The one thing he never talked about was what it felt like dropping the bombs. He flew into the darkness. Then he flew out of the darkness. In between: silence."

So, three days ago, Marianne and Sean and I honored the passing of a man who would have told you as he told me that he was nobody special. And yet his children and his grandchildren and his great grandchildren live in a country and a world that could have been infinitely worse if it were not for him and his compatriots. Gentlemen and Eastenders alike.

All, in my estimation, heroes. 

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