Tag Archives: WW2 fiction

Wave Me Goodbye – edited by Anne Boston

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Wave Me Goodbye is a collection of stories of the Second World War edited by Anne Boston. There are twenty-eight short stories in the book, obviously some better than others but it is a very enjoyable read if like me you enjoy contemporary wartime fiction.

The authors include:

Rosamond Lehman
Jan Struther
Rosamond Oppersdorff
Kay Boyle
Mollie Panter-Downes
Molly Lefebure
Rose Macaulay
Anna Kavan
Olivia Manning
Barbara Pym
Jean Rhyss
Edna Ferber
Dorothy Parker
Elizabeth Bowen
Margery Sharp
Pat Frank
Diana Gardner
Sylvia Townsend Warner
Ann Chadwick
Stevie Smith
Doris Lessing
A.L. Barker
Malachi Whitaker
Inez Holden
Beryl Bainbridge
Jean Stafford
Elizabeth Taylor

There are just a few authors that I had never heard of before, but quite a lot by favourite writers. There were just a couple that didn’t enthrall me.

I’m glad to say that I was able to borrow this book from my local library.

The Tightening String by Ann Bridge

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The Tightening String by Ann Bridge was first published in 1962 but the setting is Budapest from the spring of 1940 to Easter 1941 in Budapest. The characters are the British diplomats and their families as they experience the sensation of being in a sack with its string being pulled tighter as Italy enters the war and the Germans/Nazis take over more and more European countries.

However it’s the fate of the 44,000 British prisoners-of-war who have been captured at Dunkirk that are uppermost in the thoughts of the women, mainly the wives of diplomats. The British prisoners have almost no clothing and are freezing in their German prisons, with just one blanket to cover them and almost no food to eat.

With the Red Cross being run by old men who had been in the First World War who are absolutely clueless about how to get food parcels and warm clothing to the British men – and their refusal to be told how they should be doing it, particularly by a woman – it’s down to Mrs Eynsham the wife of the Counsellor at the British Legation to organise everything, including food donations, clothing and teaching people, including the men, to knit socks and scarves for the prisoners-of-war.

This was a great read, very atmospheric and also I think it must be very true to what the author was actually doing at the time. Ann Bridge waited over 20 years before writing about her experiences, I suspect the whole thing weighed on her chest all those years. She fairly kicks the Red Cross for being completely incompetent, certainly at the beginning of the war, I suspect that she waited until all those in control of it at the time had died off. As ever with books of this type and era the author’s frequent use of the word English when she actually means British is very annoying!

Below is the author’s note which appears at the front of the book.

Author's Note by Ann Bridge

‘HMS Marlborough Will Enter Harbour’ by Nicholas Monsarrat

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'HMS Marlborough Will Enter Harbour' cover

‘HMS Marlborough Will Enter Harbour’ by Nicholas Monsarrat is a lovely book which is illustrated by James Holland and was published in 1952. Actually it’s quite hard to believe that my copy is 70 years old, but it is. It’s a quick read with just 92 pages and a lot of illustrations. I didn’t know what it was about when I bought it in Edinburgh, so it was only when I started to read it that I realised that it was about a ship which gets torpedoed by a German U-Boat, so I did an inadvertent book link as I read it straight after reading about the sinking of The Lusitania – Dead Wake.

The book begins: The sloop Marlborough, 1,200 tons, complement 8 officers and 130 men, was torpedoed at dusk on the last day of 1942 while on independent passage from Iceland to the Clyde. She was on her way home for a refit, and for the leave that went with it, after a fourteen-month stretch of North Atlantic convoy escort with no break, except for routine boiler-cleaning.

But 500 miles from home she was hit by a torpedo killing 60 of the men immediately, the nearest land is 250 miles away, things look very black indeed, there’s a huge hole in her hull, is beginning to sink, it’s bitterly cold and their radio is broken and unfixable.

This was a great read, a real tale of adventure and it felt quite personal to me as my father was in the Merchant Navy on the Atlantic convoys AND had been torpedoed several times – but he never spoke about it other than to say that as soon as your ship was lost your pay stopped! As some of the pay was being sent home to a wife or mother that must have been alarming as they wouldn’t have known if they had survived. I would have loved to speak to him about this book but I think maybe he wouldn’t have wanted to go back to that time – even in fiction.

You can see some of the book’s illustrations here.

Sexton Blake on the Home Front

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The Witch of Blackbird Pond cover

This is a collection of two novellas. The first one is The Man from Occupied France and was written by Anthony Parsons in 1941.
The book begins with a young woman being sentenced to ten years in jail for passing information on to the Germans. It’s 1941 and Isobel Ensor had been working in an aircraft factory, in charge of the blueprints of all the aircraft designs. She had got the job through a friend that she had met at an organisation which had been set up to promote friendship between Germans and English people, but obviously when war broke out some of the Germans had decided to go home to Germany, as did Isobel’s friend. She gave Isobel a gold watch as a keepsake when she left.

When there was a tip off about the possibility of information having been stolen, Isobel is suspected of being the culprit and when her handbag is searched it’s discovered that the pocket watch which had been a keepsake was actually a small camera. Even then Isobel doesn’t realise that her so-called German friend had set her up.

Isobel’s fiance is determined to clear her name but he just makes matters worse, until Sexton Blake and his side-kick Tinker get involved. This is a really enjoyable thriller, full of atmosphere and suspense, with some humour too.

The second novella is called The House on the Hill and was written by John Drummond in 1945.
Jane Wray lives in a house which is owned by her employer who owns a mill, her mother also lives in the house and Jane’s fiance Jim is their lodger. When the owner of the mill dies his son inherits everything, he’s a violent man with a fierce temper. When there’s a murder Jane is worried that Jim might be involved – and Jim is worried about that too, and so begins a manhunt worthy of John Buchan, with plenty of twists and turns.

I received a digital copy of this book for review from Netgalley. It’s published by Rebellion and edited by Mark Hodder.

Pied Piper by Nevil Shute

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Pied Piper cover

Pied Piper by Nevil Shute was first published in 1942 and the subject is World War 2, I generally love books about the war that were written at the time, and I loved this one.

The story begins in a London club where an air raid is in progression. Two members get into conversation, John Howard is 70 years old and he tells the much younger club member – a naval officer – of his recent exploits in France. John Howard had gone to France to have a fishing holiday but to his horror the Nazis began their unbelievably fast march through European countries and before long they were in France. John had to get home to England – fast. But a couple of English guests in his hotel ask him if he could take their small children with him when he goes back home, they think that will be much safer for them. The children’s parents are diplomats and intend to travel to Switzerland on their own.

Things start to go awry almost immediately when one of the children falls ill and so begins a suspenseful journey with John Howard gathering more children along the way and having to join the vast numbers of refugees on the roads as the Luftwaffe bombed and strafed them. What should have been a simple train journey home to blighty turns into a complete nightmare when the trains are unavailable as the French army runs from the advancing German army.

Considering the subject matter I can hardly believe that it has taken me so long to get around to reading Pied Piper, I think I enjoyed this one even more than The Chequer Board which had been my favourite. I now want to tread his book Most Secret (1945) as it also has a wartime plot. Have any of you read that one?

I had to laugh at the author’s portrayal of the French rural/country people as being money grabbing and avaricious – nothing changes, that has been exactly our experience of them over the years on various holidays.

The North Wind Blows by Anne Hepple

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The North Wind Blows cover

The North Wind Blows by Anne Hepple was published in 1941 but my edition dates from 1956 and it’s the first book by Anne Hepple that I’ve read. I’ll definitely look out for more of her books as I enjoyed this one despite it being fairly predictable romance wise.

Hetha and her mother have escaped from Austria where the Gestapo had shot Hetha’s Austrian step-father. In the mad scramble to get away Hetha’s identity papers have been left behind and her mother had stupidly written her daughter’s name down as Hetha Fischer – the step-father’s surname instead of Montrose as it should have been. On Paper Hetha is an ‘alien’ and she lives in fear of being deported or imprisoned. In an attempt to dodge the authorities she takes herself off to work as a dogsbody on a remote Scottish farm, she loves farm work and ideally would have wanted to join the Land Army, if she had had her own papers.

The farm she works on is owned by Drem but although he owns the land his step-mother has the money and owns all the stock and is furious that her own son didn’t inherit the farmland. The atmosphere on the farm is awful and Hetha is treated like a Cinderella, not that she minds as she enjoys the work and is just glad to be out of the clutches of the Gestapo and also the British police. The locals aren’t exactly friendly to Hetha and things get worse over time as rumours that she is a spy circulate the neighbourhood.

I think the storyline is very authentic as people in Britain did get a bit over-excited about any strangers in their midst, and let’s face it – there are always miserable people who choose to think the worst of anyone, especially if they’ve got a hint of anything different about them.

I’ve always preferred people who are different as they’re more interesting – to me anyway. What about you?

The English Air by D.E. Stevenson

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The English Air cover

I realised recently that the reserve stock books in Fife’s libraries are now available to borrow after being unavailable for a few years due to the refurbishment at Dunfermline, so I requested a couple of old D.E. Stevenson books from the catalogue, I’m not sure if they have been reprinted recently. She was of course born in Edinburgh and was related to Robert Louis Stevenson.

The librarian seemed quite amused that I was borrowing these books – more fool her! The English Air turned out to be a great read, first published in 1940. The setting is mainly England although the story does take us to Scotland a few times and to Germany briefly.

Sophie Braithwaite is a well-off widow, living in a house big enough to allow her brother-in-law to inhabit his own wing. She has a grown up daughter and son and they’re waiting on Sophie’s sister’s son Franz to arrive, he is half German and has been brought up by his father in Germany, his mother died young. It’s 1938, a time when Neville Chamberlain was going backwards and forwards between London and Munich, trying to avert war. He was criticised for this ‘appeasement’ but in reality it gave us breathing space and a year to ‘tool up’ for war. Something that Nazi Germany had been doing for the previous five years.

I really enjoyed The English Air, Franz becomes part of his cousins’ social group, their sense of humour is often a mystery to him, he’s really very German as you would expect, especially as his father is a Nazi. But as Franz becomes more comfortable in the free and easy atmosphere of Britain he begins to see the advantages of not having to look over your shoulder all the time as Germany is being ruled by fear and violence.

I suppose this is a bit of propaganda, the lesson being that not every German is a bad German. It’s not surprising that writers all wanted to write their own book about the beginnings of the war. I seem to have been reading a lot of them recently and bizarrely I always find that scenario to be a bit of a comfort read, this is one of my favourites by D.E. Stevenson so now I’m keen to read her other wartime books. The other one of hers that I borrowed was Vittoria Cottage, published in 1949. I’ll be chatting about that one soonish.