Anyone who wishes to commemorate in some way the 80 year anniversary of the D-Day Landings on 6th June may wish to consider reading this book as a way of marking tribute. This author was one I selected as a pick from Christopher Fowler's "Book Of Forgotten Authors" (2017) and he took part as a member of the Pioneer Corps in this campaign writing this fictional account soon after the end of the war in late night shifts following on from his job at a theatre company. When published in 1948 it was popular and met with strong critical acclaim but has faded from view over the years. I read a 2019 edition published by the Imperial War Museum.
Considering battle-grounds it's the First World War which gets the greater focus in fiction. The futility, the use of humans as bait, the courage, the fear and the mud, blood and blisters were equally as present 30 years later. The second half of the book offers a realistic, visceral record from one who experienced it. Reading this, it is amazing that anyone survived.
A significant chunk of the novel is about waiting, the preparations, the awareness that something big was going to happen but nobody seemed sure when. We focus on the fictional Fifth Battalion of The Wessex Regiment. It's an ensemble piece with scenes which flit through the ranks capturing the activities and feelings of the men from raw recruit Alfie Bradley, who finds love at a dance; Tom Smith whose real love is farm work and who helps out on one after a full day's training; Charlie Venables, so popular with the men that he can flout regulations and Colonel Pothecary whose concern for his son joining the Navy filters over to his attitudes towards the soldiers. It is a very visual approach, the change of focus occurs frequently and it is no wonder that the author later focused on screenplays for film and television.
This was the first of a trilogy of war novels. Alexander Baron (1917-99) later wrote London-based fiction, one of which, "King Dido", Christopher Fowler describes as "one of the greatest and least read novels about London ever written". So that's one to seek out.
This debut novel is gritty, written from the heart with the latter battle sections based on the Fifth Battalion Wiltshire Regiment (thinly disguised here) and their encounter at Mont Pincon alongside the author's own experiences with which he must have lived with every day of his life after that but was able to use these for an unflinchingly realistic and unsentimental account. Certainly worth reading.
From The City, From The Plough was first published in 1948. I read the 2019 Imperial War Museum publication.
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