Read Missing for Free Online

“We might as well start with this one,” she said.
    They sat at the table and Peggy read aloud.
    London, England
    Dear Mr. and Mrs. Greenwood,
I am finally able to send news. We have found a war grave with the name Jack Green printed by hand on a cross over it. This cross had been made from two pieces of propeller from your son’s plane. The graveyard is beside a church in a small village in northern France. I have written its name and location at the end of this letter.
    An officer from our War Graves office travelled to France to visit the village grave site. He found proof that your son, JackGreenwood, is buried there. We did not know this sooner because only half of your son’s name is on the cross. German soldiers had copied the name from a torn card they found at the crash site in 1917. We are certain that this “Jack Green” is your son.
    We are sorry we have taken so many years to identify your son’s grave. But there is more to tell. While our officer was in the village in France, he happened to meet a young man named Luc Caron. He soon learned that Mr. Caron was the only witness to the aerial fight in which your son was killed.
    Mr. Caron was much affected by the tragedy that took your son’s life. He was only a boy at the time, but he attended the church service and the burial of your son. He also saved three souvenirs from the crash site. These souvenirs have been sent to you from this office, and you will receive them along with this letter.
    Mr. Caron asked if he might write to you directly. He wants so much to share the details of the event he witnessed so long ago.We have given him your address. You can expect his personal letter in a few weeks.
    Sincerely,
    T. S. Harvey
    Secretary
    Jack’s parents opened the parcel. They cried when they saw the strips of canvas and the splinter from the propeller. They cried, but they were glad to have real proof of what had happened to their son.
    Will went to the bookshelf and carried the atlas to the table. He opened it to a map of northern France, and he and Peggy found the name of the village on the map. Now they knew that their beloved son had a grave. Now they knew the name of the place where his body was lying.
    Two weeks later, the first letter from Luc Caron arrived. In the years to follow, there would be many more letters. But the first was the one Will and Peggy had been waiting for.It told them what they wanted and needed to know: the story of their son’s last moments of life.
    This is how that first letter from Luc Caron began.
    Dear Mr. and Mrs. Greenwood,
With deep feeling, I write this letter, having found you at last. By now you will have received the souvenirs I guarded for many years on behalf of your son. You have seen that clumps of dirt are still stuck to the canvas from the wings of your son’s plane. The strips of canvas are exactly as I found them when I tore them from the ground. The splinter of propeller, I hid inside my jacket.
    I part with these souvenirs sadly, because they have been so dear to me. But of course they are more dear to you, and it is to you that they now belong.
    I am also sorry to open in your hearts, again, the sorrow of losing your son. I have been told by the War Graves officein England that you will want to hear my story. And so, with respect, I now start at the beginning.
    In 1917, I was a small boy, only twelve years old. On March 4, a Sunday, I was on my way home from church. Just after eleven o’clock in the morning, I heard machine-gun fire in the sky above me. Two German planes were fighting a British plane. I looked up to watch this fight in the sky...

Acknowledgements
    I thank C. W. Hunt and Norm Christie for responding to my questions about World War I pilots. I thank the Archives of the Canadian War Museum for permission to fictionalize a real event that happened during 1917. I first came upon the file (#19720147) while gathering information for a story I was writing. For Missing , I decided to expand