From little acorns…

I’m supposed to be writing the sequel to Liberty Bound. Well, I’ve penned over 40K words already and have the rest all neatly plotted. However, other ideas don’t stop popping into your head when you’re occupied elsewhere. The first instinct is to jot them down: make sure you don’t forget them, add them to the pile.  But a promising idea has a habit of bouncing round the head, like the ball in an old Atari squash game. It also grows, ideas spawning other ideas. You feel compelled to do a summarised chapter plan, ensuring you capture the spine of the story. When you’ve got that far, and if still excited, you go ‘what the hell, I’ll whip it up into a short story.’ Despite the planning and intention, characters and storylines develop a life of their own, leading the narrative and author forward. What starts as a short story soon grows into a novella. You become invested, eager to bring all to life, determined to wrap it up, have the wonder of a finished product, and return to what you’re meant to be doing.

So, I have just finished the first draft of a novella called ‘Triumphant Where it Dares Defy.’ A title borrowed from Lord Byron’s poem, Prometheus. It is a prisoner of war story with a difference. Set during the Second World War, it follows Jock Mitchell, a lance corporal captured in France early in the war holding back the Germans, allowing others their escape from Dunkirk, and marched across Europe to a camp in the Polish town of Torun. During the war, the beautiful town, with its old fortifications, was home to a number of POW camps, incarcerating British, Polish and Russians soldiers.

I’ve taken a liberty in the story (one of a few!), including officers and enlisted men together in the same camp. In reality, they housed officers separately. Under the Geneva Convention, officers were not compelled to work for their captors and so suffered a different form of imprisonment. The enlisted, below the rank of sergeant, were not so lucky. Local farms and factories, confiscated by the Germans, became the benefactors of their blood and sweat. The local Poles too paid a terrible price for the occupation, forced to work as slave labour, and I hope I’ve represented their spirit adequately. It was not an easy life in a world of suffering and death.

What interested me with this set of circumstances, and through the eyes of Jock, was the idea that a group of British soldiers (mainly territorial), not best prepared in the first place and sacrificed to save the cream of the army at Dunkirk, spent a large percentage of the war in captivity. How did they feel about ‘watching’ the war pass by? Were they happy to be out of it or rather chomping at the bit to somehow do something more? While I suspect the answer is ‘neither’ - safe at home living in peace being preferable for all - I imagine, in an either/or choice, the alternate answer is a bit of both, and, for the sake of drama, I’ve followed the latter. But what could they do to land a blow, miles from home, locked behind machine-gun-guarded fences? To find out, you’ll have to await publication.

I still have plenty of work to do, sharpening the prose, spotting those typos, getting the historical details checked, and ensuring the dramatic moments carry a punch, but I hope this little intro has whetted your appetite.