A Letter to Dad on Christmas Day

It wasn’t until I was on the top of Sigiriya Rock that I remembered you always wanted to come back here.

I was sitting alone on a ledge when a Sri Lankan family joined me. One of them, a young woman, started to talk to me. “Don’t you have any friends?” I told her my friends were down below us, exploring. It was her first time visiting Sigiriya as well – because of Christmas, they have a two-day holiday, and so they could come. She asked about Christmas and my family, and I told her I miss my family, but that my dad was here more than 70 years ago, and so I was having Christmas with him instead. She must have wondered why I turned away.

I could see your airfield in the distance, where your bombers once lumbered down a rough landing strip, barely clearing the tops of trees as they took off on their missions across the Bay of Bengal. Knowing you, you would have climbed this rock back then, maybe many times. I know you would have had the same view back towards the base. I tried to put my head in the mindset of a twenty-five-year-old man. Were you hardened by war already? Or were you able to drift into reverie, like me, despite the fear and the losses you faced every day? 

Today I climbed up on steel staircases firmly rooted to the cliff. I clung to sturdy railings, hand over hand. You would have balanced on boards held by ropes slung across that cliff, and used worn notches carved 1600 years ago to clamber up the stone to the citadel at the top. It would have been dangerous, but danger defined your life when you were here. This would have been the easy kind.

Sigiriya, 1943, taken from an RAF aircraft. The back of the photo is stamped "Top Secret".

I know why you wanted to come back. This country is beautiful, and bountiful, and deep.
You never had the chance to return, but I’ve come in your place. I miss you, Dad, but I’m more happy than I know how to say, that I can wish you a Merry Christmas from a place you loved. I think you would have been happy, too, to know I am here.


With the greatest of love,
Your daughter, Anne

Dad and his crew at Sigiriya Air Base, in front of the Liberator he flew. He is in the back row, 2nd from the right.

E.J. Mullins served in Sigiriya with the R.A.F. 160 Squadron from July 15, 1943 to August 1. 1944. He died in 1980, when he was younger than I am now.