The Great War

RING OF FIRE . . . Between the covers

In my reading experience, the definitive account of the outbreak of The Great War remains Barbara Tuchman’s The Guns of August (1962). The author made us flies on the wall in cabinet meeting rooms across Europe, and hidden observers within General Staff offices of the armies of Germany, Britain, France and Russia. This book is very different. Its premise is that this was a truly global conflict, principally due to the vast colonial outreach of the major powers. Men and women, ordinary citizens of places in Africa that were ruled from London, Berlin, Paris and Brussels, remote settlements in the Caucuses who were subject to the rule of the Tsar, shoeless peasants in the outer reaches of the ailing Ottoman empire, and those living in the United States and South America who were part of the colossal diaspora from Europe – all felt the rough hand of destiny on their shoulder.

The celebrated (but not always admired) historian AJP Taylor famously argued that the outbreak of the war was inevitable, due to military planning relying on inflexible railway timetables. Once the trains, packed with tens of thousands of men, headed off to their destination, then conflict was inevitable. This theory is easily challenged but Churchill and Eberholst give this example:
Britain’s rail network comprised some 23,000 miles of track. On 4th August 1914, 130 companies were effectively taken over by the government. At Aldershot, from 5th August officers were being handed dossiers that revealed the plan for their departure. For instance: ‘Train No 463Y will arrive at siding B at 12.35 a.m., 10th August. You will complete loading by 3.40 a.m.’

Britain’s army in 1914 was tiny compared to those of France, Germany and Russia. It was even outnumbered by the army of Belgium, but it was superbly trained and had relatively recent battlefield experience in the Boer Wars. The key difference between Britain and the empires of France and Germany was in the existence of Britain’s white dominions. Australia, Canada, New Zealand and South Africa were, in theory at least, at one with the mother country’s foreign policy.

One of the many valid points made by the authors is the vexatious question of perceived neutrality. Long before the first shots were fired in the war, developed nations needed vast quantities of imports and, were they fortunate enough to possess natural resources, ships to export material and goods elsewhere. The ownership of cargo vessels was perhaps not as opaque then as it is now but, for example, if a Swedish ship sailed into Hamburg loaded with iron ore, did that compromise Sweden’s notional neutrality? What if an American ship loaded with wheat were headed for the Port of London? Did that make the vessel fair game for German submarines?

The authors remind us that by the time the trenches ran from Switzerland to the Belgian coast, maps were able to be made showing every dip or fold in the land and – literally – every large shell crater. In the dying days of August 1914, particularly in the rural areas of Galicia, East Prussia and Serbia, the landscape was a complete mystery to field commanders. Knowledge of the terrain was almost completely absent, resulting in disastrous tactical blunders by all sides.

Comparing different kinds of horror brought about by war is, perhaps, futile, but as an amateur historian brought up on grim tales of life in the Western Front trenches, I was struck by the descriptions of the relentless carnage of these early weeks of the war. Yes, it was a war of movement but, in particular, it was fought in intense August heat. Men on the march were driven mad by thirst; tinder-dry fields and woods caught fire quickly, cremating the dead and wounded alike. This was a new kind of war; medical services were woefully inadequate to meet carnage on this scale. I was quickly disabused of any notions I had that these early battles between the huge armies were somehow cleaner and less grisly than the trench warfare which followed them.

Another surprise (at least to this woefully ignorant reader) was to learn that Japan and Britain fought together to drive Germany out of Chinese city of Tsingtao (below) between August and November 1914. It is a sobering reflection on the fragile nature of national alliances to think that less than a decade earlier, Japan and Russia locked horns in a savage war. Now, they were, notionally, allies in a war against Germany.

As autumn turned into winter, the major powers were all unsteady on their feet. The French had suffered astonishing losses in the east, but had engineered a miracle on The Marne. Germany’s relentless advance through Belgium had been thwarted, and they had back-pedalled in disarray to dig in north of The Aisne. Despite the debacle at Tannenberg, Russia had inflicted a monstrous defeat on Austria Hungary in Galicia. This account, from a Hapsburg officer, is horrific :

‘Scenes from Dante’s Inferno were happening on the road. Driven by instinct, both men and horses pressed forward, regardless of the corpses and wounded lying on the ground. Horses hooves were treading over bellies and heads. Intestines, guts, brains mixed with mud covered the road with a bloody mess. The screams of the wounded, men and horses, together with the cracking rifles, grenade and shell explosions drove one to near insanity.’

I am always intrigued by writing partnerships, and ponder the (largely irrelevant) question, “Who did what?” Whatever the respective inputs were here, Churchill and Eberholst have written a book that is historically authoritative but always accessible. UK Great War literature tends, for quite laudable reasons, centred on the Western Front and the great calamities that took place there, but here we have a timely reminder of the days before the trenches were dug “from Switzerland to the sea” and the horrific slaughter that took place in places with names that have long since vanished from the map. Ring of Fire will be published by Apollo on 8th May.

April 26, 2025 0

THE PARIS PEACEMAKERS . . . Between the covers

The guns that began their incessant thunder in August 1914 are, at last, silent. The German field army has surrendered, the Kaiser’s High Seas Fleet lies at anchor in Scapa Flow, and Wilhelm himself has abdicated. In Paris, the great, the good – but more importantly, the victorious – are assembling to pick the bones out of five years of carnage. Meanwhile, we meet the Rutherford family. Their home is in Thurso, on the stormy north eastern coast of Scotland. Jack is just one of nearly 900,000 British men to have paid what was poetically called ‘the supreme sacrifice’. His sisters are both now in France: Corran is with a charity in Dieppe, bringing some sort of education to young soldiers who have had academic opportunities denied them for the last five years. Stella is in Paris, having been engaged as one of the hundreds of typists needed to record the decisions and arguments in the drama shortly to be played out at Versailles. Alex is still on Royal Navy duties, with his ship keeping a watchful eye on a war that is still being fought between Russian Bolsheviks and the Tsarists they overthrew.The novel follows the lives and loves of the Rutherford girls.

Flora Johnston handles the historical background well. It is now widely acknowledged that the Treaty of Versailles did not end the war between Germany and her enemies. It merely put it in on hold for twenty years. There was not to be a new world, or anything remotely like the ‘land fit for heroes’ that optimists imagined, either in Britain or France,and certainly not in Germany. In vain did US President Wilson strive for some kind of settlement that would be for all time. Who can blame France – with 1.4 million dead, thousands of villages reduced to rubble, its industry shattered and a priceless architectural heritage destroyed – for wanting to make Germany pay?

We see 1919 through many different eyes, and this is a story skillfully told. Arthur, Corran’s teacher colleague is embittered by the sacrifices his own parents made to educate him, and white-knuckled with anger that, back home, his own family, protesting against the lack of jobs, are faced with baton charges by police. Rob Campbell, once Corran’s intended fiancée, is worn down and traumatised by his work as a battlefield surgeon. His fondest hope is purely escapist, and it is that one day he might be able to relive his glory days on the rugby pitch. But with so many of his fellow players rotting under the French and Belgian soil, what hope does he have?

The game of rugby is a powerful motif in this story. in an England-Scotland game in March 1914 the thirty young men are at the peak of fitness, chests bursting with pride. Too many of those chests would, in the coming turmoil, simply become targets for German bullets and shell fragments. On New Year’s Day 1920, the first game of any consequence to follow the war was played, between France and Scotland. It is a small and hesitant step forward, but there are too many missing names of the teamsheets.

The story is a remarkable blend of history, romance and social observation. Flora Johnston is a fly on the wall at a bitter ceremony in a young man’s bedroom that must have been repeated countless times across Britain and, indeed, France, and Germany:

“She felt again the overwhelming sadness of sorting through Jack’s possessions yesterday. All over the country there were houses like this, filled with the ephemera of hundreds of thousands of lives that had unexpectedly ceased to exist. Clothes and footballs, bicycles and egg collections, razors and comics and diaries and gramophone records. So much of it: surely far too much for the nations attics or rubbish heaps or junk shops to absorb.”

The Peacemakers of Paris reaches out to so many different readers. WW1 buffs who appreciated Birdsong and Pat Barker’s trilogy will find something here. Those who like romance, a hint of heartbreak, but an optimistic ending will also be happy. Most importantly, anyone who enjoys a novel which is well researched with convincing characters will not be disappointed. Published by Allison & Busby, the book is available now.

April 17, 2024 0

THE BEST POSTBOY IN ENGLAND . . . Between the covers

The novel is mostly set in Kent during 1916 and 1917, but there is a prologue – and epilogue – which take place in 1940. The title character is a fourteen year old lad called Freddie Lovegrove. He is, for someone living in a rural village, well educated, but he lives with his nearly blind mother and, with no father and no money coming into the house, he gets the job of village postboy.

The grandest property in Eagley is Tendring, a house occupied by Suhina and Stephen Harkness. Suhina is Indian, and Stephen is manager of a local munitions factory. He was badly wounded in the Boer War, and lives in constant pain. They had three sons, but the elder, Arthur was killed in 1915 in the Batlle of Aubers Ridge. The two other boys – Edward and Tristan – are both fighting in France. Tendring has two housemaids, Harriet and Phoebe. We soon learn that Phoebe is pregnant, but the deeper significance of this is not revealed until near the end of the book.

Tendring becomes a temporary convalescent home for wounded soldiers, and the first three arrive. Jack merely has an injured foot and is a possible malingerer. Gabriel is physically sound, but has extreme shell shock. Christopher Ellis, the third man, is hideously wounded. He has lost both his hands, and has a terrible facial wound.

Suhina Harkness has befriended Freddie and he, in turn, is fascinated by her. The attraction is not sexual, but he finds her exotic and is drawn to her deep emotional intelligence, and spends as much time as he can at Tendring.

There are pivotal points in the book, and the first is when Freddie agrees to be amanuensis to Christopher. He writes a letter addressed to Christopher’s wife Anne in their Nova Scotia home. The letter is loving, but makes no mention of Christopher’s injuries. Freddie takes the letter back to the post office, fully intending to post it later. Next, Freddie is working late, and he intercepts a motorcycle despatch rider who has a telegram addressed to Major and Mrs Harkness. When he takes it to Tendring and hands it to Suhani, she learns that Edward Harkness was killed in the fighting for High Wood, on the Somme.

Freddie’s fortunes have become inextricably mingled with those who live at Tendring. While on a woodland path to the house Freddie discovers the horrifying sight of Christoper Ellis’s body, hanging from a tree. After the dreadful discovery, Freddie is in the depths of depression, but is dramatically brought out of his reverie:

“First his face filled with hot blood when he suddenly remembered he hadn’t posted Christopher’s original letter; it was still under the blotter, waiting. Second, it had not occurred to him until now that it was impossible for a man with no hands to hang himself.”

The police have already reached that conclusion and, after a witness at Tendring said they saw a man with a limp out in the dark on the night Christopher died, Stephen Harkness is arrested on suspicion of murder, but is released when Suhani lies that he was with her, in her bed, all night.

Freddie is ever more conscious that his job has transformed him into The Angel of Death, and when another letter from the military arrives for Tendring, he takes it home with him. When, after much agonising, he steams it open, his worst fears are confirmed. The private memorial in Eagley churchyard to Arthur Harkness must now be altered to include the names of his two brothers. He makes the fateful decision not to deliver the letter, and the consequences are immense.

This book bears the hallmarks of tragedy, whether believe that what happens Is the result of personal flaws, or intervention from ‘The President of The Immortals, in Aeschylean phrase’ that Hardy referred to at the end of Tess of The D’Urbervilles. For Suhani comes redemption and – although much later, and only partly – Freddie too, but for Stephen Harkness the downfall is absolute, and Stephen Frost leaves the truth of the death of Christopher Ellis as an enigma.

This is a book which dwells on physical pain caused by battle, but also the mental pain of a marriage disintegrating, the agonising dilemma of a teenager trying to be kind but, in doing so, inflicting cruelty. Sometimes it is unbearably poignant, but riven through with a deep vein of compassion.

The Best Postboy In England deserves to sit on the shelf alongside other epic accounts of The Great War and its consequences. Books such as as Covenant With Death (John Harris,1961), Regeneration (Pat Barker,1991) Birdsong ( Sebastian Faulkes,1993) and The Photographer of The Lost (Caroline Scott, 2019). It is published by Burnt Orchid Press and is available now.

March 24, 2024 0

A DARK STEEL DEATH . . . Between the covers

Chris Nickson’s long running saga about Leeds copper Tom Harper continues with our man now Deputy Chief Constable. We are in January 1917 and, like in other major cities, patrols are on the look out for the silent peril of Zeppelins, while Harper has a possible act of sabotage to investigate after a pile of newspaper and kindling is found inside a warehouse used for storing military clothing. The book begins, however, a month earlier with a true historical incident.

In nearby Barnbow, a huge munitions factory had been established from scratch in 1915. Its prime function was the filling of shells. With the constant drain of manpower to the armed forces, the workforce at Barnbow became over 90% female. On the night of 5th December 1916 a massive explosion occurred in Hut 42, killing 35 women outright, maiming and injuring dozens more. In some cases identification was only possible by the identity disks worn around the necks of the workers. It is believed that the explosion was triggered by a shell being packed with double the required amount of explosives. The dead women, at last, have their own memorial.

With the Barnbow investigation ongoing, Harper has more problems on his hands when a sentry outside a barracks in the city is shot dead with, it turns out, a SMLE (Short Magazine Lee Enfield) .303 rifle, adapted for sniping, which was stolen from the barracks own armoury.

There are so many things to admire about this series, not least being the meticulous historical research carried out by the author. One example is the development of police investigative techniques. Back at the beginning, in Gods of Gold (2014), the idea that people could be identified by their fingerprints would have been seen as pure fantasy but, as we see in this novel, it was an essential tool for the police by 1917.

Back to Tom Harper’s current case. As he and his detectives sift what little evidence there is, they seem to be chasing their own tails. Harper’s worries don’t end as he closes his office door each evening. In an earlier book, we learned the grim news that his vivacious and beautiful wife Annabelle, a tireless campaigner for female equality, has developed early-onset dementia. Harper has employed a Belgian refugee couple to run Annabelle’s pub, and keep a close eye on his wife, but he never knows from one day to the next what state she will be in. If he is lucky, she will show glimpses of her old self; when she is having a bad day, she inhabits a totally imaginary world and slips from all the anchors of reality. The most painful moments for Harper come when Annabelle believes that he is her late first husband, Harry.

Eventually the case breaks. Harper and his team are astonished to find they are facing not just one killer, but a partnership. Two former soldiers, Gordon Gibson and James Openshaw were virtually buried alive when a shell exploded near them on the Western Front. Openshaw was a sniper and Gibson, not much of a shot but with superb eyesight, was his spotter. Both men were invalided out, but Openshaw, after a spell at the famous Edinburgh hospital, Craiglockhart, remains under constant medical care at Gledhow Hall, a Leeds stately home used as a hospital for the duration of the war. It seems that for whatever motive, Gibson smuggled Openshaw and the rifle out of the hospital to commit the murder of the sentry. Now, Gibson is at large with the rifle and, despite his poor marksmanship, has shot at Tom Harper’s official car, and badly wounded a policeman.

The endgame takes place as Gibson uses all his fieldcraft to find his way into a heavily guarded Gledhow Hall to liberate Openshaw and resume their killing spree. The finale is breathtaking, powerfully written – and deeply moving. A Dark Steel Death is published by Severn House and is available now.

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September 25, 2022 0

THE MIRROR GAME . . . Between the covers

Even before I read the first page, this book ticked a number of important boxes for me, including:
1920s ✔️
London ✔️
Great War background ✔️
Beautifully imagined cover graphics ✔️
I’m happy to say my initial optimism was not to be shattered. So, what goes on? We are in 1925 and in a London that has borne relatively little structural damage from the recent war compared to what it was to suffer less that two decades later. The major damage, however is to the people and families of the city. Across Britain, the war has claimed the lives of 886,000 participants, mostly men between the ages of 18 and 40, and London has more than its fair share of widows, children without fathers and parents without sons.

Investigator and journalist Harry Lark fought for King and Country and emerged relatively unscathed although, like so many other men, the sounds, smells and images of the trenches are ever present at the back of his mind and he has also become addicted to laudanum – a tincture of opium and alcohol. When he is contacted by a friend and benefactor, Lady Charlotte Carlisle, she tells him that she thinks she has seen a ghost. Sitting in Mayfair’s Café Boheme, she has seen a man who is the image of Captain Adrian Harcourt, a pre-war politician who was killed on the Western Front in 1918, and was engaged to be married to her daughter Ferderica. But this man is no phantom who can fade into the wallpaper. Other customers notice him. He is flesh and blood, and approaches Lady Charlotte’s table, stares into her eyes, but then leaves without saying a word. She asks Lark to investigate.

Harry’s search takes him to Harcourt’s father who throws him out on his ear. He then visits an exclusive gentleman’s club, where he asks one too many questions, and is beaten within an inch of his life by thugs in the pay of someone powerful. Helped by an old friend, retired policeman Bob Clements, he learns that Adrian Harcourt was listed as being killed in a firefight near a ruined French village, when the company he commanded were slaughtered. There were a mere handful of survivors, one of which was the son of an influential London gangster, Alec Ivers.

Harry Lark begins to get the sense that something terrible caused the death of most of Harcourt’s company, and that some seriously well-connected people have ensured that the truth about their demise has been successfully covered up. Iver’s son has been committed to an institution for mentally and physically damaged WW1 soldiers, and Filton Hall is Harry’s next port of call.

As he tries to learn the truth Harry himself takes both mental and physical batterings, while there are a string of deaths around the fringes of the affair. His growing love for Ferderica seems to be reciprocated, but then they both receive a huge shock which turns the case on its head.

Author Guy Gardner’s day job – or, more likely, night job – was jazz pianist, but now he teaches piano at home in Dorset and is planning to write more novels. He also says he enjoys a glass of single malt, so I raise a glass of my favourite, Lagavulin, in his honour!

The book is certainly not short on action, intriguing characters and plot twists but, unsurprisingly, Guy Gardner is at his best when describing the occasions when music (Ferderica is a violinist, and Harry is a music journalist) is woven into the story. The Mirror Game is atmospheric and has a convincing sense sense of time and place. It would be good even coming from an established novelist, but as a debut it is excellent. It is published by The Book Guild, and is available now.

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May 25, 2022 0

THE VISITORS . . . Between the covers

Visitors008 copy

England, 1923. Like thousands upon thousands of other young women, Esme Nicholls is a widow. Husband Alec lies in a functional grave in a military cemetery in Flanders. His face remains in a few photographs, and in her memories. Left penniless, she ekes out a living by writing a nature-notes feature for a northern provincial newspaper, and serving as a personal assistant to an older widow, Mrs Pickering. Mrs P has the advantage of being able to visit her husband’s grave whenever she wants, as he was not a victim of the war.

Mrs P decides she would like to visit her brother in Cornwall. and sends Esme on ahead. Gilbert Stanedge, funded by his sister, presides over a community of damaged young men he once commanded during the war. They live in a rambling old house they have renamed Espérance. Each man has been scarred – physically and mentally – by the horrors they faced in the trenches. Sebastian, Hal, Clarence and Rory contribute as best they can – paintings, pottery, husbandry – to the upkeep of the house.

Esme’s initial reluctance to go to Cornwall is tempered by the fact that it was where Alec grew up. Could a visit to the street where he lived, or a stroll along the beaches he played on as a child keep the flame of remembrance burning a little brighter, for a little longer?

Caroline Scott (right) treats us to a high summer in Cornwall, where every flower, rustle of leaves in the breeze and flit of insect is described with almost intoxicating detail. Readers who remember her previous novel When I Come Home Again will be unsurprised by this detail. In the novel, she references that greatest of all poet of England’s nature, John Clare, but I also sense something of Matthew Arnold’s poems The Scholar Gypsy and Thyrsis, so memorably set to music by Ralph Vaughan Williams.

Another clever plot device brings us face to face with the horrors that the men faced in the trenches of Flanders. Rory has written a book detailing what happened. It is still unpublished but, as Esme grows closer to him, he lets her read it. She is still, of course searching for something – anything – of Alec.

Half way through the novel, Caroline Scott employs a vertiginous plot twist. Readers must decide for themselves if it is plausible. Further detail from me would be a spoiler, but yes, after a few raised eyebrows it did work. The Visitors is an astonishing tale of love, betrayal, heartache and – finally – redemption. With its two predecessors (click on the images below for more information) it makes a remarkable trilogy of novels about the men and women who survived the carnage of 1914 – 1918, but came away with scars and damage that sometimes never healed. Published by Simon & Schuster, The Visitors is out now.

December 9, 2021 1

ROBERT GOODING HENSON . . . A memory

Robert Henson, the central character in J.M. Cobley’s A Hundred Years to Arras is not a fictional creation. He lived and breathed, but was just one of the estimated forty five thousand men to perish during the 1917 battle. He died of wounds, and is buried in Hervin Farm British Cemetery, St Laurent Blangy, on the outskirts of Arras. The Western Times reported his death on Wednesday 9th May 1917.

There is no joy in this sad tale, but at least Robert Henson did not leave a widow – or children – back in Somerset. As Cobley’s book relates, Robert’s death plunged his father deeper into a spiral of drink and depression, and all his mother was left with was the War Gratuity – a paltry one pound eight shillings and fourpence, some mass produced medals, and what was sarcastically termed the “Dead Man’s Penny”, below. (This is not Robert’s actual Memorial Plaque, but an artist’s impression)

Robert’s regiment, The Somerset Light Infantry, has a distinguished history. It was founded in 1685 as part of King James II’s response to the Monmouth Rebellion. Under various titles it fought in every major conflict including the Napoleonic Wars, the Crimean War, the Afghan Wars and the Boer War until it was finally merged with other regiments to become The Light Infantry in 1968.

I am old enough to remember when living veterans of The Great War were numbered in their tens of thousands, and I grew up in a country still mourning its WW2 dead, but there was – and always will be – something different about the 1914-1919 war. Poet Vernon Scannell expressed this perfectly: (the full poem is here)

Whenever the November sky
Quivers with a bugle’s hoarse, sweet cry,
The reason darkens; in its evening gleam
Crosses and flares, tormented wire, grey earth
Splattered with crimson flowers,
And I remember,
Not the war I fought in
But the one called Great
Which ended in a sepia November
Four years before my birth.

Robert Henson’s name lives on. Not just in the poignant words of a modern novel, or carved on a headstone in a lonely French cemetery, but much closer to the place he called home, whose trees, streams, fields and cloudscapes shaped his upbringing. This simple plaque is on the wall of St John the Baptist church Skilgate.

September 2, 2021 0

BASED ON THE BOOK BY . . . Paths of Glory (part two)

Humphrey Cobb (left) was born on 5th September 1899, in Siena, Italy. His mother was a doctor, and his father was an artist. He was sent to England for his early schooling, but then received his secondary education in America. After being expelled from high school in 1916, he decided to join the Canadian Army and was sent to Europe to fight. Remember that America did not join the war until 1917. He kept a war diary, and October 1917 has him at Shoreham Camp, in Sussex, as part of the 23rd Canadian Reserve battalion. January of 1918 has him near Hill 70, in front of Loos. He describes the death of a friend from his platoon.
“What happened to Young, no-one ever knew for sure. Some thought a Fritz potato masher had landed on his respirator and that it had exploded just as he was brushing it off. Evidence: face blown in and right hand blown off. “
He saw the war out, and after being stationed in post-war Cologne for a spell, he finally arrived back in Montreal on 31st May 1919.

The years after The Great War saw Cobb involved in a variety of enterprises. He wrote Paths of Glory while working for Gallup, the advertising and polling company, and it was published in 1935 by The Viking Press. It is believed that Cobb took the core of his story from real events on the Marne front, where for Corporals from the 136th Regiment were executed after a failed attack on a German strong-point near Souain.

So how does the book stand when set alongside the film? Firstly, it has to be said that Cobb died in 1944, so any input from him was clearly impossible. Anecdote has it that Kubrick had read the book as a teenager, and had been deeply affected by it, but a chain of events led to the film screenplay differing in one essential element from the book. In the mid 1950s Kubrick was still an emerging talent as a director, and did not have the clout to persuade big studios to put up the money for an anti-war film, made in black and white. The crucial intervention came with the interest (and influence) of Kirk Douglas. The star clearly had to have a main part in the film, but who?

In the novel, Colonel Dax is a relatively peripheral figure who, reluctantly, goes along with the doomed plan to storm the German bastion which is, incidentally, called ‘The Pimple” in the novel. So, it was a bold stroke in one way for Kubrick to re-imagine Dax as the forthright and confrontational character whose personal bravery is never in doubt, and a man who just happens to have been a lawyer in civilian life. And who better to play Dax than the dimple-chinned Hollywood heart-throb Kirk Douglas?

Cobb focuses almost all of his attention in the novel on the three men who were executed, and on the various reasons why they came to be shot by their own comrades. The book has no pantomime villains, and certainly no one person who has the blood of the victims on his hands. The men die as a result of the inexorable grinding of the military machine and the numbing effect of battlefield casualty statistics. Men are reduced to numbers, compassion is subverted by casualty statistics, and procedure trumps initiative every time. As William Tecumseh Sherman may (or may not) have said, “I tell you, war is Hell!“

There are places where Kubrick and his screenwriters – Calder Willingham and Jim Thompson – did stick close to the book. The first is with the three man patrol into No Man’s Land where the cowardly and drunken Lieutenant causes the death of one of the men, thus setting up the selection of the other to be one of the judicial victims. The film plays it pretty straight, too with the events immediately prior to the execution. The character of Private Ferol is played with characteristic bravura by Timothy Carey, (right) There is one crucial difference; in the book, Ferol is chosen because he he is anti-social and widely disliked for his unpleasant behaviour, and he continues to be sarcastic and foul-mouthed right up to the point where he is strapped to the execution post. In the film, however, the enormity of his fate finally overwhelms him, and he in the unforgettable procession from the chateau to the place of execution – a chilling via dolorosa – he is reduced to a weeping, stumbling figure, clutching the arm of the Padre.

The final confrontation between Dax and the general doesn’t happen in the book, neither does the powerful final scene where the soldiers in the estaminet boo and mock the captured German girl who is forced to sing to them, but then they are reduced first to silence, with some in tears, and then they join in with the simple old song she is singing. Outside, Dax has just been told that the regiment has been ordered to return to the Trenches, but he walks away, leaving his men to their brief hour of peace.

It is worth repeating that Cobb’s gaze is focused on the rigid mechanism of army life. It whirrs, ticks and chimes the hours with little regard for the human lives caught up in its cogs. He shapes this in many different ways, but never better than when he describes the efforts made to make sure the execution is done ‘properly’.

“Regimental Sergeant-Major Boulanger was there, busy, competent as regimental sergeant-majors always are, in the same way that head waiters are busy, competent, or seem to be so, if they are good head waiters.”

It is to Boulanger that Cobb gives the very last action, in the last paragraph of the book, where he is given the task of administering the coup de grace to the bodies slumped against their posts.

“It must be said of Boulanger that he had some instinct for the decency of things, for, when he came to Langlois, his first thought and act was to free him from the shocking and abject pose he was in before putting an end to any life that might be clinging to him. His first shot was, therefore, one that deftly cut the rope and let the body fall away from the post to the ground. The next shot went into a brain that was already dead.”

I think that Kubrick (below) takes the gist of the novel, and shaped it to his own ends, and in doing so created a magnificent piece of cinema. His anti-war message is different from Cobb’s, but was clearly something he felt very deeply. A decade or so later he was able to return to his theme in Dr Strangelove, but this time he used satire and the comedy of the absurd to make his point.

December 2, 2020 0

BASED ON THE BOOK BY . . . Paths of Glory (Part One)

Stanley Kubrick’s 1957 film The Paths of Glory was a limited success at the time – it just about broke even at the box office – and was initially highly controversial. It was banned in France for twenty years, and several other European countries refused to show it as a gesture of solidarity with France. It was also banned in all American military establishments. So, why the fuss?

The film, based on a book by American writer Humphrey Cobb, focuses on a section of The Western Front in 1916 held by the French. Although it is never mentioned in the film, we assume that the action takes place around Verdun, the most costly single engagement in a war that chewed up men’s lives like a meat grinder. The 701st Regiment are ordered to attack an impregnable German position known as ‘The Anthill’. General Miraud, (George Macready, above) after initially protesting to his superior that the attack would be suicidal, changes his mind after being offered promotion.

Colonel Dax (Kirk Douglas, above) is the officer who will lead the attack. He is dubious about the prospects, but obeys the order. The attack is an unmitigated disaster. German shellfire halts progress in No Man’s Land, while one company is unable even to leave the trench, such is the ferocity of the bombardment. In a rage, Miraud orders his artillery to fire on his own lines in order to force the men to attack.

Miraud feels that his own honour has been impugned, and, after removing the regiment out of the line to a chateau some miles away, orders that 100 of the surviving men be arrested and charged with cowardice. The scheming General Broulard ( Adolphe Menjou, below) suggests that just three men will be enough pour encourager les autres, and Dax is forced to ask three of his company commanders to select three sacrificial victims.

Three men are chosen: Corporal Paris (Ralph Meeker) is selected because his superior officer, Lieutenant Roget, needs to silence him in case he exposes Roget’s cowardice. Private Arnaud’s name is simply drawn out of a hat, while Private Ferol (Timothy Carey) is a deeply unpleasant individual who, it seems, ‘has it coming’.

The three men are tried in a mockery of a judicial process, despite an impassioned defence by Dax, who was a lawyer in civilian life. They are sentenced to death. Dax has one last card to play. He has a written testimony that Miraud has ordered gunfire down on his own men, but it is dismissed by Broulard. The men are duly executed, with one of them, Arnaud, strapped to a stretcher after being seriously injured in a fight with his guards.

Broulard and Miraud are enjoying a leisurely breakfast in luxurious surroundings, when Dax is invited to join them. He shares his information about Miraud’s order to shell his own trenches. Miraud is told that he will face and enquiry, and then storms out voicing a sense of betrayal. Broulard congratulates Dax on a very clever plan to secure his own promotion. Dax finally loses his temper at this interpretation of his motives and rages at his superior officer.

Back at the chateau, the surviving members of the 701st Regiment are in an estaminet, drunk and reckless. The proprietor pushes a young German girl onto the makeshift stage and forces her to sing. She hesitantly sings an old song. “Der treue Husar” (The Faithful Hussar). The men’s mockery turns to empathy and then grief, as they join in with the song. Outside, Dax has just been given the order that the 701st are to return to the front line with immediate effect.

In Part two of this feature, I will explore the differences between the book and the film, and attempt to understand what Cobb and Kubrick were trying to say about this tragic episode in European history.

December 1, 2020 0