Rex Fellows

Rex Fellows is the youngest son in the Fellows family and one of the book’s clearest figures of wartime courage, absence, and return. His military service places him at the centre of the family’s fear: while the country celebrates victory in Europe, Rex is missing somewhere in the fighting, and his family must confront the possibility that national triumph has cost them their youngest child. His eventual homecoming reverses that expectation, but the prolonged anxiety leaves a lasting mark on his mother’s health.

Identity and Family Position

Rex Fellows is John Fellows’s younger brother and the youngest son of the family. His identity is first established through the domestic conflict surrounding transport: after John takes Rex’s motorbike without asking, Rex arrives the following morning, furious both about the unauthorised use of his property and about his urgent need to recover the missing machine. The incident places him within the practical pressures of wartime life, where transport is scarce and ordinary family arguments unfold against the disruption caused by German bombing.

Rex’s anger in that episode is not presented as weakness or mere irritability. He is determined to reclaim what belongs to him and to locate the motorbike that John had intended to return before the bombs made the plan impossible. The domestic quarrel therefore becomes a small but revealing glimpse of his forceful character before the narrative enlarges him into a soldier whose decisions carry much greater consequences.

Wartime Service and Courage

Rex’s principal transformation is from a young family member into a combat leader. At only nineteen, he leads his men in the capture of a German bunker, showing no regard for his own safety. His conduct is formally recognised when he is Mentioned in Dispatches and receives medals for bravery. The episode gives his heroism a precise scale: he is not simply remembered by his family as brave after the fact, but is placed in direct physical danger while leading others against a fortified enemy position.

His courage exists within a wider wartime landscape of relentless violence. The bombing of Coventry, the destruction of other cities, and the continuous danger faced by soldiers and civilians make Rex’s bravery part of a national struggle rather than an isolated adventure. Yet the narrative keeps the public history attached to the individual. The same war that produces official honours also removes young men from their homes, turns family news into terse military notifications, and leaves relatives waiting without reliable knowledge of what has happened.

Absence and the Fear of Loss

By Victory in Europe Day, Rex has been out of contact for months. His family knows that he is still fighting with his unit at the heart of the battle somewhere in Europe, but his whereabouts are unknown. John is safe in the desert, where he occupies himself by making sand yachts, and Derek is also reported to be safe; Rex alone remains unaccounted for. The contrast makes his absence especially acute. Victory celebrations fill the country with street parties, bunting, Union Jacks, fireworks, bonfires, sandwiches, trifles, jelly, and cake, while the Fellows household cannot share the general joy.

The arrival of a telegram intensifies the uncertainty. A delivery boy brings the envelope addressed to W. B. Fellows, Rex’s father, and everyone recognises the form as the communication dreaded by wartime families: a few terse lines announcing that a loved one is missing or dead. The unopened telegram is carried into the dining room and placed on the bureau, where the family stares at it without anyone initially daring to break the seal. Their fear converts the object into a concentrated threat. The war has technically been won, but the family’s private value has shifted from celebration to possible bereavement.

The suspense is sharpened by the family’s assumption that Rex has not survived. They imagine that, through a cruel irony, the gallant young officer has fallen precisely when victory is being proclaimed. The question is not only whether Rex is alive; it is whether public victory can retain meaning if it has taken the family’s youngest child. Megan finally decides that continued waiting is unbearable and opens the envelope herself, relieving the agony that has paralysed everyone else.

Return and Consequences

The telegram contains no announcement of death. Instead, Rex’s brief message states that he is well and on his way home. The terse military style that had seemed to promise catastrophe becomes an instrument of rescue: the same kind of message the family feared now delivers certainty and hope. The next day, the sound of boots coming up the entry announces Rex’s physical return. He comes home safe and sound, converting the family’s suspended grief into overwhelming joy.

His return does not erase the years of fear. The family had spent the war worrying about the wellbeing of both soldier sons, and the strain takes a terrible toll on their mother, whose health never fully recovers from the stress. Rex therefore returns not to an untouched home but to a family altered by prolonged uncertainty. His survival restores the household’s immediate happiness, while also revealing that wartime damage persists after the fighting and official celebrations have ended.

Narrative and Thematic Significance

Rex Fellows’s arc is built around a sharp reversal between public history and private experience. The country’s celebrations promise collective release, yet his family remains trapped in the war’s most intimate consequence: waiting for news of a missing child. His return supplies the scene’s emotional reversal, but the relief is made more meaningful by the narrative’s acknowledgement of what the waiting has cost.

He also stands within the book’s recurring contrast between the disappearance of young men and the community’s effort to endure. The narrator recalls that groups of young airmen diminish one by one as men are reported missing or dead, while wartime spirit draws strangers together and helps people survive shared deprivation. Rex’s story combines both dimensions. His bravery belongs to the collective national struggle, but his disappearance is experienced through the dining room, the unopened envelope, and the family’s dread. His eventual footsteps at the door offer a rare return from the pattern of irrevocable loss, making him an emblem of survival without allowing survival to cancel grief, fear, or the long afterlife of war.