Missing The Boat: War Stories of Thomas Alan Dirkin

45 One wonders what other incidents had similar triggers. I doubt that this one was exceptional. How many times could an explanation be found? How many times did life just go on, gradually hoping the triggers would subside and gradually fade away? I am sure many never did. Tuesday and Thursday Nights My father almost always was out on Tuesday and Thursday nights. After the war he joined the Territorial Army Reserves. Once a year, he would go to camp for two weeks as part of his responsibility. I am sure there was a strong element of what was a boys club about the TA. But it served a function of counselling and therapy. My father would be mortified to have used those terms! What he did explain was that he did have a chance to talk about the war to men who had been in the war. No one could understand unless they had been through it, he would say. His relationship with the TA lasted until he moved away from the Manchester area following his retirement. They say time is a great healer, and perhaps his My father was in the Royal Army Medical Corps, within the Territorial Army Reserves. Government records show he joined in November 1951.