‘Jack’s Hedge’ – a Short Story To Evoke a Spirit of Remembrance

Published on: 11 Nov, 2025
Updated on: 11 Nov, 2025

Alice Fowler

For many people November 11th is a poignant day of the year, evoking a spirit of Remembrance, so today we think it’s particularly appropriate to publish the following short story by Guildford writer Alice Fowler.

Alice is an award-winning writer of short stories and longer fiction. Her debut short story collection, The Truth Has Arms and Legs, was published in July 2023 by Fly On The Wall Press, an independent press based near Manchester.

Jack’s Hedge

By Alice Fowler

She plants Jack’s hedge the day he goes to war.

Hawthorn, hazel, spindle, blackthorn: saplings she finds about the farm. Plants them, in a line from the farmhouse, to the edge of the South Field.

Jack’s Hedge. March, April, the shoots take root. Bright young leaves; a dust of blossom, here and there. Jack writes that he’s in training, at an air base in the east.

June, he’s home on leave. Hair short, a different boy from when he left. Reconnaissance, he tells her: hunched up with his camera, taking photos far below. Vital war work. Sorry, Ma, I can’t say any more.

That summer, he’s in action. She looks up at the silver planes skimming overhead. Is Jack there, at a window, staring down? At night, she lies rigid; old Tom peaceful at her side.

Months pass. Jack’s letters, telling them he’s safe.

Two summers. Then, the next July, the postman’s step comes heavy. She’s learnt the news already, by the poppy, that’s sprung up by Jack’s Hedge.

The hedge: it is her comfort. Abuzz with butterflies, beetles, hoverflies. The ceaseless throb of life.

‘We must move on with the times, pet,’ Tom tells her, when the war is done. ‘Grow food for our country. It’s what our Jack would want.’

Would he? She remembers Jack, transfixed by a field-mouse. A boy who’d scoop an earth-worm up in his hands rather than squash it with his boot.

Machines come, rip up hedgerows that have stood for centuries. In their place, wide fields she doesn’t recognise; crops she doesn’t know.

But Jack’s Hedge – it keeps growing. It’s an oasis, a refuge, for creatures that have lost their homes. Violets seed along it. Birds nest in the thorns.

She tends and lays its branches, takes cuttings. Soon, has enough for a new hedge.

She writes to the War Graves Commission, to ask if they’ll accept them. A letter back: ‘Thank you, Mrs Stovold, but our cemeteries must look the same, in honour of the dead.’

What can she do with them, instead?

Mrs Dawkins in the village, she’s lost her son. Turns out she’d like a little hedge to sit by.

Ant – Jack’s old best friend – he’d like one too.

The village school, it wants a garden, where children can learn the species that are missing from the farms. She helps them plant her saplings. At the opening, tells them of the birds and insects that frequent Jack’s Hedge.

She and Tom, their farm is different from the rest. More skylarks, reptiles, dragonflies. Stewardship: a word she hasn’t heard of. Finds out, she’s done it all along.

Tom comes one day, when she’s sitting in the shade.

‘Shall we go and see him, Irene? You know, before it gets too late?’

That’s how, at last, in France, she sees the spot where Jack crashed down to earth. A wooden cross; beside it, hawthorn, hazel, spindle, sprouting at the field edge. Jack, at rest. His spirit, growing with the hedge.