Finding Alfie: A D-Day Story by Michael Morpurgo

Title: Finding Alfie: A D-Day Story

Author: Michael Morpurgo

Genre: Historical Fiction

Publisher: Scholastic Australia

Published: 1^st March 2025

Format: Hardcover

Pages: 80

Price: $29.99

Synopsis: Young Michael Morpurgo always loved the small painting of a boat hanging on Aunty Iris’s wall. But all she would ever say about it was that her beloved Alfie had painted it and given it to her years ago—before he’d left for France during World War II and had never come back. Michael decides to try and find out what happened to Alfie himself. He embarks on a journey that takes him to the marshes of an English coastal village and across the Channel into France, learning a profound lesson along the way about service and the surprising endurance of memory.

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World War One and World War Two, and dates like ANZAC Day, Remembrance Day and D-Day are part of the consciousness and identity of many nations. These are days that have shaped people, communities and the world, especially those with a connection to what happened. Michael Morpurgo has written many books over the years that have explored history and war, but it is his recent books that are a fictionalised personal story that have deep connection and emotion tied to them.

His latest book explores his own journey as a young man to find out more about his Alfie, the young soldier his Aunt Iris was in love with Alfie when he went away to war, leaving her with a small painting of a boat. He went off to France and never came home – but his story was never forgotten. Michael sets off to find out more, find out what happened to Alfie and who knew him in the lead-up to D-Day. It’s not a long book, but it is filled with a deep and meaningful lesson about what happened to the men who served, and what it meant to the people of France men like Alfie helped and saved from the Nazis and Germans.

But more than that – it is about the power of memory, and the people and stories that stay with us. It is about how we remember people, and what we remember about them. It’s a gentle and poignant reminder of the impact of war and its legacies as well. The gentle journey Michael goes on in this book takes him across the Channel to a small village and family that welcomes him, and tells him what they know of Alfie and his what happened to him. It is a reminder that there are stories from war that have far reaching impacts on communities and families in a myriad of ways. It’s an important story to read as we make our way towards ANZAC Day in Australia, and Remembrance Day later in the year. These days are significant for many people, particularly those affected by the wars. Whilst this story is focused on an English family, there are probably many stories like it that involve soldiers from other nations that fought alongside England in both conflicts.

And, there are many stories that have never been told. Many people who may never have found out what happened to their loved ones. Alfie’s story is one of hope, that people can find out what happened. That the memory of the people lost lives on in the people they left behind and the people they touched. It’s s reminder that war is never easy. And beyond the story are historical facts about the war and the historical context of D-Day. A day that changed the world and World War Two, and the lives of so many across Europe.

Books like this remind us of what sacrifice, memory and service mean to people through eloquent stories about family history. These things happened. They can’t be changed, and remembering these events and how they affected people is important. Personal stories add humanity to the facts as well, because we can all look up how many people landed or died, which countries were involved or what the overall outcome was. But, the individual stories are what humanises things, what makes us realise that war is more than guns and bombs. And what people remember about loved ones after they are gone.