The Vigil

In the bustling rotunda of London's King's Cross station, a stocky, grim-faced little man strode briskly through the hurrying crowds this week, peering at the passing faces through horn-rimmed glasses. A few old hands at the station nodded recognition, and the word, went around: "Mr. Sutherland is back again." John L. Sutherland, 70, a Vancouver cement contractor, was back at King's Cross for the sixth time looking for his son, who is officially reported dead.

Sutherland's search began almost five years after his flyer son Wilfred, 25, shot down over Holland, was reported killed in action. During a London visit, on Easter morning 1948, Sutherland left his hotel room and strolled across the street to King's Cross, because "something seemed to draw me there." Out of nowhere, he says, Wilfred appeared; the two men stared at each other. "He didn't say anything, but I knew he was thinking, 'I've seen your face before.' " Then Wilfred --or the man Sutherland believed to be Wilfred -- was swallowed up in the crowd, and pushed into a train which whisked him away before John Sutherland's shock had worn off. Sutherland's conclusion: Wilfred survived the war but came out a nameless victim of amnesia.

Six times since, Sutherland has come to London to take up his vigil near the trains, hopeful that Wilfred will step out of one of them. When help from the R.A.F. and Scotland Yard reached a dead end, Sutherland had pictures of his son enlarged and distributed, with an offer of a reward for fruitful information. Sutherland stubbornly hangs on to the belief that his son will come back to London for another Easter holiday. "As long as I live," he vowed, "I'll be here at Easter, waiting for him."

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