Angus’s Door – Scotland to Czechia 2023

Fundraising for Children’s Cancer and Leukaemia Group CCLG

Participants: William Simpson and Andrew Balfour

On June 26, 2023, I will travel by car from my home in West Lothian to the Czech Republic and return within 7 days, give or take! This is a journey of around 3000 miles made possible by one of our main sponsors, Dickson’s of Inverness who are providing the vehicle and have generously offered to auction the car off on our return for CCLG. I will be accompanied by my oldest friend, Andy Balfour who will be my co-pilot and navigator. This is an essential role as, since being diagnosed with ME/CFS in 2019, I would be unable to complete such an undertaking without assistance.

This event has been inspired by two different stories of loss in one family, 60 years apart. One is of a young man lost aged just 19, in the last months of the Second World War. The other is of a baby boy born with terminal cancer who died aged just 2 in 2007. These tragic events resonate through our family history and are imprinted on all our hearts.

Walter Simpson joined the RAF aged just 17 in 1943 as an Air Gunner and after training he joined Bomber Command. Sadly, his plane was lost on a mission out of Scampton Airfield in March 1945 and crashed near Hranice in what was Czechoslovakia, now the Czech Republic or Czechia. All on board were killed.

Walter was my uncle and my dad’s eldest brother. My Dad (Adam, who sadly passed away last year) and I visited the Commonwealth Cemetery together in Prague in 2002. Although I never knew Walter, he has always been a strong presence in my life and the lives of the wider family. He is a symbol of bravery and unimaginable sacrifice, repeated so many times around this country and all over the world.

In 2005 I became a dad. We welcomed a beautiful son called Angus Adam Simpson into our family. But our lives were soon broken apart by his cancer diagnosis, with Alveolar Rhabdomyosarcoma. You can read more about him here

https://specialnamedfunds.cclg.org.uk/anguss-door/

Angus was as brave and strong as any soldier whilst fighting for his life, never wavering, always amazing and smiling right up to his last moments here with us in 2007.

It has been a long-held ambition of mine to travel to some of the historic sites associated with WWII in Europe, culminating at the plane’s crash site in Hranice. I have arranged to collect a piece of the plane’s wreckage (verified by local sources) and return it to the Bomber Command Memorial Spire in Lincoln to be interred there in memory of Walter and so many young lives cut tragically short. It seemed a fitting tribute to him and his comrades. I decided that whilst honouring the loss of this part of my family, I could fundraise for research into Children’s Cancers for CCLG and honour the enormous loss of the other warrior in our family, Angus.

Two boys; two generations apart; one family. We carry this loss and cherish the memories.

Please help us to help the children battling cancer right now and in the future, and remember all those who gave the ultimate sacrifice.

Willie and Andy