Very
Exceptional Soldiers: a Synopsis
The central
character of "Very Exceptional Soldiers"
is the British soldier. In this book Tommy
Atkins, or "Thomas", is personified
and brought to life in the characters created
for the story; developed throughout the story;
and brought into, or removed from, the story
as events unfold. The result is a captivating
tale of the lives of a group of men in a British
infantry battalion in the first ten months
of the Great War from just prior to mobilisation
in August 1914 to a battle at Festubert, a
small town just west of Lille in Northern
France, in mid-June 1915.
It begins
on Remembrance Day 1994, eighty years on from
the start of the war when any survivor of
the BEF would be 100 years old. The short
introductory chapter is a lead in to the vivid
memories of a survivor and, as he falls asleep
by the fire, the start of the dream that has
repeated itself throughout his life. The story
then follows his dream, tracing his life from
the time, aged eighteen, he had been forced
to run away by an incident in his village
and chose to join up. It takes him through
his first two years in Northern Ireland where
he begins to grow up in company with other
young men from a range of backgrounds. Each
of the characters develops as the group increases
in size and experience to provide the tapestry,
the patchwork, that is the multi-faceted nature
of a battalion on peacetime garrison duty.
With the growth of each of the individual
characters so "Thomas" begins to
take on a character, drawing off their individual
foibles, their strengths and their weaknesses,
so that he becomes the means of expressing
the feelings of the soldiers in general.
The sequence
of events follows what befell the 1st Battalion
the Norfolk Regiment through that period,
based on the reality of its diaries and recorded
history. However, these events are viewed
through the eyes of the dozen or so characters
all created and developed specifically to
explain every facet of what happened, to record
and express views and feelings at, from and
about all levels in the complex structure
that is an Army at war. Key events are the
battle of Mons, the battle of Le Cateau, the
withdrawal to and the battle on the Marne,
the battle on the Aisne, the race to the sea,
the first battle of Ypres, Christmas in the
trenches, the blowing of one of the first
underground mines, gas attacks, life in the
trenches and finally the battle at Festubert.
Each of these takes its place in this story
of people caught up in events over which they
have no control, and with the descriptions
of each event meticulously correct in its
historical detail they provide the essential
background to this compelling description
of the effect of the war on individuals.
Woven
through the story are tales of love, of hate,
of courage, of cowardice, of loyalty, of theft,
of bestiality, of rape, of desertion, of boredom,
of pestilence and of fear. All designed to
add the human flavour to the inhuman nature
of war.
The old
man never wakes from his sleep. It is his
last dream and they bury him in a Norfolk
graveyard. The soldiers who fire the salute
over his grave are from the Royal Anglian
Regiment, which today carries on, among others,
the history and traditions of the Norfolk
Regiment. These modern personifications of
Thomas had themselves just returned in the
preceding few weeks in 1994 from an operational
tour of duty in Sarajevo, which it is where
it had all started just 80 years earlier.
They were saying goodbye to one of their own.
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