A fork used by a Scots World War Two hero before his death in 1940 has been presented to the son he never got to meet at a remembrance service in France.
Emotional David Balfour, 84, was given the utensil belonging to Robert Balfour whose body has never been found after he was killed in battle aged just 27. The brave private from the 1st Black Watch Battalion of the 51st Highland Division was defending the village of Houdetot, in Normandy, when he passed away.
His unit had been attempting to keep a route to the coastal town of St.Val ry-en-Caux open for evacuation – a week after 338,000 men were saved from Dunkirk. However, following two days of fierce fighting, the heavily outnumbered Allied troops had no option but to surrender.
David never met his father as he was born a few weeks after the battle and Robert’s wife Doris had to wait a year before he was officially listed as ‘presumed dead’. But after the fork was discovered in the foundations of a house in Houdetot, local officials presented it to him with a symbolic jar of soil from the village.
David said: “It was a very emotional occasion. Seeing the fork for the first time and actually holding it in my hand was a very special moment. My mother did not know my father was dead for a year until she got a message from the Red Cross.
“Although she’s no longer with us, I would like to think she’s as pleased as we are about his fork being found after all these years.”
Robert, originally from Fife, Scotland, had settled in Dover, Kent, shortly before the outbreak of war with his new wife Doris. And he was then deployed to Northern France as Allied troops battled to counter the lightning-fast Nazi advance across Europe.
The human toll of the fighting at Houdetot was extremely heavy, with 30 British and French soldiers killed in action.
Many more Highlanders, including some from the Black Watch, were also listed as missing, such as Robert, whose remains are yet to be discovered. In a battle featuring heavy artillery shelling, tanks and the use of flame-throwers, no one would ever know what exactly happened to the missing young Scots.
Robert’s name appears on column 66 of the Dunkirk memorial where troops missing in action during those dark days of May and June 1940 are remembered. And as a teenager, David first visited the Memorial in 1957, when it was officially opened by the late Queen Mother, and then went back six times since.
But he was stunned when local historians contacted him to say a fork that belonged to his dad had been found during renovations to a home in Houdetot
David, from Hull, East Yorks., said: “The people who live in that part of Northern France have a great interest in and respect for the British soldiers who died there during the war. The forks were quickly identified as being British military issue. Two of them had the letters BW – Black Watch – stamped on them along with individual service numbers.
“Fortunately for us, a local writer and historian called Herve Savary along with some local officials then did the detective work and managed to track down Dad’s service number and matched it to the numbers on one of the forks. From there, they managed to find me through a lot of research at Ramsgate into family trees and that’s how the invitation came about.
“No-one really knows how or why the forks ended up where they did in the foundations of the old house so that remains a bit of a mystery. We do know the other stamped fork belonged to a lad called Collins who was captured by the Germans and spent five years in a Prison of War camp in Poland before coming home.
“As far as I’m aware, they haven’t yet been able to find any surviving relatives. It’s thought the unstamped fork could have been issued as a replacement to someone who had lost their original one so we will never know who it belonged to.”
He was presented with the fork and the jar containing soil from the village alongside members of his wider family at the ceremony at Houdetot town hall in July. It followed the laying of wreaths at a monument to the soldiers who died in the village in 1940 and the symbolic placing of white roses on the graves of Highlanders buried in the local churchyard by schoolchildren.
A local piper performed Scotland the Brave during the proceedings. Doris later re-married a Polish naval officer who served with the Free Polish Navy during the war.
Retired marine engineer David has now added his father’s fork and the gift of the soil where he fell to a collection of commemoration memorabilia. This includes a typed invitation sent to his mother from the Imperial War Graves Commission on behalf of the late Queen Mother to attend the unveiling of the Dunkirk Memorial in 1957.
He said: “It means so much to have the fork here with me at home. I will always remember the kindness and respect shown by the people in Houdetot towards my father and his friends who lost their lives there.”
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