Last updated 08:58, Saturday, 15 November 2008

WHEN Rolf Harris recorded Two Little Boys in 1969, he had no idea how the words would later haunt him with personal poignancy.

Rolf Harris with his father's helmet

Forty years on he has discovered that the theme of the song about two young soldiers, who had known each other as children before becoming comrades in arms, has a remarkable resemblance to what actually happened in the First World War to his father and his uncle.

The song tells of Jack and Joe. Joe is badly wounded before Jack says: “Did you think I would leave you dying when there’s room on my horse for two?”

Harris, 78, went to northern France and Belgium for the Armistice Day edition of the BBC's My Family at War.

He visited a war cemetery, mainly for Australian soldiers, where he found for the first time evidence about his uncle Carl’s death – just two weeks before an armistice was declared in November 1918.

Carl, like Harris’s father Cromwell, had been born in south Wales before emigrating to Australia in 1911.

Although Harris knew that Carl had perished in the war, he had no idea of the story of how his father and uncle had fought together in the trenches.

Cromwell and Carl Harris had signed up with the Australian army by pretending to be older than they were. Cromwell said he was 21 when in fact he was 18. He did this so he could vouch for Carl, who was 16 but claimed to be 18.

The two young men ended up fighting on the same part of the western front, where the Australians lost 45,000 men. Both were wounded.

“Dad’s first aid worked but Carl’s didn’t,” said Harris. “He had lost so much blood. It was so sad.”

Sad enough to make this last in a fine series of Remembrance documentaries a heartbreaking memorial to heroes.