To be a “Man” in prewar England was to maneuver inside an armored suit of gender conventions. To be Rudyard Kipling’s son was to be trapped in a generational tragedy.

He’d never fought in the trenches himself, but “when the drums [began] to roll” for the Great War, he helped John march—pulling strings to maneuver his eager but severely myopic son past the army’s eyesight requirements. John went missing in the Battle of Loos in 1915 and was confirmed dead two years later.

As a celebrity author, Kipling remained an official booster of the war; as a grieving father, he sank into a deep bitterness. “Kipling spent the later part of his life in sulking,” wrote Orwell, whose essay never mentions John’s death. “Somehow history had not gone according to plan.”

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/articles/70303/iffy