A Name On A Wall: Two Men, Two Wars, Two Destinies by Mark Byford Mainstream Publishing, £18.99

The name of Mark Byford should ring bells. Not because he was from 2004 to 2011 Deputy Director General of the BBC, but because he is the son of Sir Lawrence Byford.

Sir Lawrence was formerly Chief Inspector of Constabulary, who headed an inquiry into West Yorkshire Police’s handling of the Yorkshire Ripper investigation and who was president of Yorkshire County Cricket Club.

I was not aware of Sir Lawrence’s war record until I started reading his son’s book which, probably, warrants the adjective ‘extraordinary’.

Lest that sound grudging, I am wary of superlatives. Three pages at the front of A Name On A Wall are full of them from the great and the good including four BBC celebrities – Dame Jenni Murray, Sir Michael Parkinson, Andrew Marr and John Simpson.

Their encomiums only made me think, ‘Well, they would say that about their former boss, wouldn’t they?’ Only when I was making my way through the early chapters did I think that those endorsements might be justified.

In these chapters Byford describes his experiences in East Texas where he had gone to meet the family and friends of a young soldier killed in Vietnam. That young man’s name was Larry Byford.

On the black stone memorial wall in Washington DC the names of 58,282 dead American military personnel commemorate that conflict in South East Asia. Larry Byford’s story – born poor but raised well, doing his best in unpropitious circumstances – represents all their stories.

The contrast with Lawrence Byford’s experiences – born poor in Yorkshire but raised well as a 19-year-old serviceman in the Second World War – prompted Mark Byford’s journey of discovery in America and Vietnam.

It was prompted by his father’s revelation that as a trained signaller he was sent to work with the Americans at Allied command headquarters in France and Belgium after the D-Day landings.

“My dad’s final war days in Europe in early 1945, he recalled, saw him moving to Bad Neuenahr in Germany to the 15th US Army’s HQ, then, finally, dispatched to Reims for the unconditional surrender.

“Lawry Byford, my dad, had been in the city of Reims on the day of one of the greatest moments in the history of the 20th century... and I hadn’t known about it until that moment.”

Lawry Byford went on to have a family and a distinguished, well-paid, much-honoured career. Private Larry Byford, of the First Air Calvary Division, was in Vietnam from April to June 23, 1967. He was killed trying to rescue a fatally-wounded major and was returned home in a casket. He was 22.

On a peerless blue sky day in East Texas, with only blackbirds breaking the silence, Mark Byford reflects on his self-imposed mission to link the lives of two soldiers with the same name, unrelated to each other, from different generations and countries.

“Here I was, 3,000 miles from home. Alone. In Texas. At a grave. Looking down on Larry. I was a stranger to him and yet here I was.”

A Name On A Wall – part biography, part chronicle, part history – movingly connects past and present and reconciles the differences that seemingly separate them. It could make a great film.

Mark Byford’s royalties are pledged to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund, which looks after the memorial wall in Washington DC.