Wednesday, June 2, 2021

What We Are Writing: Rhys Bowen on Suitable for Memorial Day

RHYS BOWEN: For once I don't have to think about a suitable post for what I am writing. I saw so many powerful images of Memorial Day, I saw a tank museum on TV and learned that the life expectancy of a tank member during WWII was twenty nine minutes after they went into battle. Imagine knowing that and yet doing your duty anyway. I also so a photo last week of a landing craft, heading for Dunkirk. The men looking up for the camera, some giving cheeky grins, others innocent stares. About ninety percent of them would be dead within an hour. So senseless. So many young lives lost needlessly. And yet most believed WWII was necessary. They volunteered to do their part to stop evil from swallowing the world.

I write about a similar scenario in my next stand-alone novel set in the East of England during the war. My heroine is evacuated from a bombed house in London to the countryside, and finds herself next to a bomber command base. Every night those planes set off for Germany and every morning some don't return. Fifty percent of bomber crew did not survive. Fifty percent. Think about it. You eat in the mess hall and look at the man next to you and think "will it be you or me not sitting here tomorrow?" but they still did it. They still climbed into planes and flew off into the darkness ahead.

Here is a small scene near when Josie arrives in Lincolnshire:

The hot water bottle made her bed bearably warm but Josie awoke the next morning to find her window completely covered in patterns of frost. When she cleared some of it away she looked out on a sparkling world. A red sun hung over the Eastern horizon. Snow covered fields seemed to go on forever, divided by dykes and canals that glowed pink in the rising sun. After the narrowness and confinement of a big city all her life this landscape took Josie’s breath away. She had never imagined such an enormous sky.

 As she watched she heard the muffled roar of a plane and saw two aircraft coming in to land. Two bombers, heavy, unwieldy. She noticed that one of them was pitching and shuddering like a wounded insect, and then she saw the reason—part of one wing had been destroyed. She watched the unscathed plane lower its wheels and dip behind the line of the trees, then the damaged plane dipped too. Suddenly there was an explosion, a fireball rose over the trees and she realized that the plane had crashed trying to land. She turned away, feeling sick.  The enchanted sparkling landscape now had a new dimension—it was a place of danger.

I think we now appreciate books about WWII because we have all lived in a place of danger for the past year. We have now been in a position when we never feel completely safe. We might have taken every precaution but opening the door to a stranger, bumping into someone in a supermarket might mean our death. And now we can actually feel what it was like to live in a time when bombing was a regular occurrence , when invasion a possibility, when most of Europe was invaded by the enemy.

And yet people got on with their lives. They did what they were supposed to, they snatched happiness wherever they could and didn't think beyond tomorrow.
We honor them all now. Not just those who went out to fight but those who stayed at home and kept going amidst bombed out homes and lost love ones.





26 comments:

  1. So many lives needlessly lost. And yet . . . .

    This is a powerful piece, Rhys, touching hearts and souls. I look forward to reading Josie’s story. Getting on with your life had to have been monumentally difficult under the circumstances, with war right outside the windows. And yet they did . . . .

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  2. No, I can't imagine that! How horrible, to live with the Sword of Damocles over your head every day. Not even this past year could approach that kind of feeling of imminent danger. And it was plenty stressful as it was.

    Man's inhumanity to man (most often literally by men), is responsible for a great deal of agony in our world, isn't it?

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  3. I'm glad to hear of another wartime standalone, Rhys, and love the passage.

    I learned yesterday that my father's cousin, Leslie Maxwell, was not a fighter pilot as I had thought. He was a Bomber maintenance man and he died in a flying accident two weeks before WWII ended in Europe. He and some others were flying to Northern Ireland for a weekend leave when the plane crashed on the Isle of Man. So very sad.

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    1. Leslie worked out of Ridgewell in Esssex.

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    2. that sure is a tragic loss Edith, to make it all the way through the war...

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    3. This is even more tragic, Edith. To survive the war and then die going on leave is the most bitter irony

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    4. Yes. Apparently they sent a bunch of the support crew to thank them for enabling the work to go on. 31 died on their way to R&R.

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  4. Powerful, Rhys.

    One of my husband's favorite movies is Twelve O'Clock High. The movie opens with a glimpse of decommissioned Archbury in the Midlands. The sight of the abandoned and decaying base always disturbs my pilot husband, but my memories of 1970 Great Britain is of former bases lovingly tended as memorial gardens. The sacrifices were not forgotten.

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  5. Wonderful post Rhys, thanks. And I'm so excited to know another book's coming!

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  6. Rhys, I am very excited about this book. Your historicals always capture the time they are set in and the characters are wonderfully drawn, their stories compelling!

    On another topic, I just listened to the Audible of The Last Mrs. Summers. I think your reader nails it! She does a good job with accents, her male voices are varied and believable. I'd already read and loved the story. I gave the whole thing 5 stars.

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    1. Thank you, Judy. I was devastated when my first reader died and had to choose a new reader, but I think she’s okay

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  7. What a powerful passage, Rhys. Can't wait for the new book!

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  8. What a great post, Rhys. Like so many others, I have absolutely loved your stand-alones. You have a real gift for writing about that period of history.

    In addition to the reasons you mention, I think we are drawn to stories set in WWII because the contrast between good and evil was so stark and unambiguous then, whereas it often feels so murky now.

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  9. Thanks for sharing this, Rhys - it makes it feel so real. I agree with Susan that good vs evil were more clearly distinct than they seem to be these days.

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  10. I am looking forward to reviewing this one on NetGalley.. Royal Spyness I don't usually get to review but the others I do and really love them.

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  11. E cell EMT piece, Rhys. And so true, the pandemic has changed us in so many ways.

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  12. This past year has been anxious but I don't think it approaches what people lived through during WW2. Bless them all.

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  13. Rhys, I already am looking forward to reading your next standalone novel set during the Second World War.

    Very compelling to read novels about the Second World War. I often think of the Churchill ? quote "Keep on Plodding" ? meaning Carry on? I do not know where that quote "Keep Calm and Carry On" originated.

    My family has a War story, though it pertains back to the First World War. My American grandfather enlisted as soon as the USA entered the war although he was not of age. Yes, he lied about his age. His ship was attacked by enemy submarine? ship? and he, along with his fellow sailors, were on lifeboats until the Royal Navy rescued them. My grandfather was in a military hospital in England when my poor great grandparents got a telegram saying that my grandfather Died in action. The family was in the midst of planning a funeral when my great grandparents got a letter from my Grandfather saying that he was in a military hospital in England.

    Diana

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  14. I love this, Rhys, and it beautifully states what I've been thinking over the past year-plus: that other people have seen worse times than we are, and they put their heads down and got through it. It's comforting, in a weird way, to read about the hardships of the past; it's like listening to a friends say, "I managed it, and you will to."

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  15. A beautiful and moving piece, Rhys--and I can't wait to read the book!!

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  16. I was in Armor (tanks) in the Sixties when in the Army. I stayed stateside, Ft. Knox, but I can tell you it was really claustrophobic inside a tank.

    I’m sure the book, like all of yours, will be wonderful.

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    1. Rick, I just can’t imagine lowering myself into a tank! Thank heavens you weren’t sent into battle!

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  17. I feel like we pale in comparison to the fortitude of those living in the thick of WWII, and I feel like there was a united front that we, in our divided country, can't achieve. If only there was more of a selfless mindset now, like then. I know that so many have suffered in so many ways over the past year, but it hasn't garnered the unified effort to defeat the enemy that was so evident in WWII.

    Anyway, I do love your war-time novels, Rhys, and I look forward to this new one.

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