I too got the feelng that it must have been edited. There were quite a few threads, I thought, that were left unexplored, and things that were said that remained sort of unchallenged. For instance, he commented several times on the fact that he found it interesting that thoughts of suicide and depression ran in his family after he found out about his ancestor's note in the bottle.
To me, that note in the bottle read like someone's idea of what a suicide note should say and the whole incident seemed more like a calculated plan to make people think he was dead so that he could do a bunk, which he did. After he'd deserted his first wife and children, and joined the army (which a lot of men have done in the past to help them 'disappear'), he deserted again twice, making it look like a bit of ahabit. Again, I smiled to myself when SB said that maybe his ancestor had come back to the army the first time out of patriotic duty because the record read 'reclaimed from desertion'. Maybe it's me, but I would have just thought that meant he got nicked!
Is it just me?
