Welcome Home Hector - An Update

In November 2011 I posted a blog about an iconic photograph that was taken in 1945

Last week I received an e-mail from a descendent of the family

" I recently stumbled across your blog on the photo concerning Hector Murdoch returning home after World War 2 and you wondered what became of the people in the photo.

I am married to John's daughter (the boy in the photograph) and can happily tell you that John is still alive and well and living here in Cumbria since about 1974 along with his wife.

My wife can't really remember her grandfather Hector as he died when she was very young but used to go in school holidays to visit her nanny Rose in Norfolk until she died when my wife was around 

18 which was in 1989.

John was also five years of age in the photo and not nine as stated in the blog.

Thanks."

In my defence the information regarding John's age came from a newspaper caption. I thought at the time he looked younger than nine years old but I believed what the newspaper said. You never learn! 

Welcome Home Hector

Surname      First name(s)      Spouse      District      Vol      Page
Marriages Jun 1936 
Hearn          Rosina M           Murdoch     Uxbridge     3a    257   
Murdoch     Hector W A        Hearn          Uxbridge     3a    257  

The marriage of Hector and Rosina led to one of the most famous photographs to have come out of the Second World War. And is certainly in my opinion one of the finest ever taken 

Gunner Hector Murdoch arrives at his new prefabricated house in Tulse Hill, London, — on his birthday no less - and is greeted by his wife Rosina and 9 year old son John. He has been away for four and a half years, three and a half years of which he was a prisoner of the Japanese after the fall of Singapore in 1942.

"They are virtually airborne with joy as they charge down the garden path to greet him".

There was nothing staged about this photograph which was taken by Harry Todd. Hector nearly died of cholera in Singapore. For 18 months, Rosina had no idea if he was alive or dead. Yet here, a new age dawns before them all, just as it did for a whole generation.

I wonder what happened to Hector, Rosina and John - the new prefabriacted house in Tulse Hill is no longer there. They were built to last for ten years but in some parts of the country a few have survived to this day. Ah the UK's post war housing policy!