Somewhere in France: A Novel of the Great War (27 page)
Read Somewhere in France: A Novel of the Great War Online
Authors: Jennifer Robson
I offer my sincere thanks to the following for their assistance:
The staff of the Great War Archive (Oxford), Collections Canada (Library and Archives Canada), the Imperial War Museum, National Archives (UK), the National Library of Scotland, and the Toronto Reference Library for their assistance as I researched this book.
Deborah Cooke, former writer-in-residence at the Toronto Public Library, for her very helpful advice regarding an early draft of this book.
Aaron Orkin, Division of Emergency Medicine, University of Toronto; Eric Webber, Department of Surgery, University of British Columbia; and Farah Valimohamed, Department of Anesthesiology, Royal Columbian Hospital, for their informed critiques of my descriptions of Great War–era surgery, anesthesiology, and postoperative care.
Professor Stuart Robson and professor Mariel Robson for their painstaking review of this novel at all stages.
My agent, Kevan Lyon, who saw the potential in Lilly’s story, found it a home at William Morrow, and talked me off the ledge every time I started to panic. I am honored by your belief in me.
My editor, Amanda Bergeron, for her sensitive and insightful approach at all stages of the editorial process, and for her warm support for me personally. Her colleagues at William Morrow and HarperCollins have also been a delight to work with, and I am most grateful for their assistance.
My dear friend Kelly Smith Wayland, who persuaded me to try again when I’d given up hope, as well as Denise Beaton, Rena Boniza, Jane Dimoff, Jane Evans, Elizabeth Felgueiras, Kelly Fruhauf, Ana Nascimento, and Jennifer Milligan. I am so grateful for your friendship and constant support.
Members of my family, both near and far, who have been my greatest cheerleaders, in particular Stuart, Mariel, and Molly; Regina and Gino; Sean, Maggie, and Grace; Michela, Jonathan, Emma, and Chiara; Terry and Graham; and John and Bunny. My grandmother Nikki Moir broke down many barriers in her own career as a journalist and was a key source of inspiration for me.
My late mother, Wendy Robson, who gave me my first copy of
Testament of Youth
, and instilled in me a passion for historical fiction that even graduate school could not extinguish.
My sister, Kate Robson, who was the first to read this book back when it was nothing more than a ridiculously elaborate outline. It would likely still be an outline if not for her relentless and unwavering encouragement. I owe everything to her.
My children, Matthew and Daniela, who were patient and loving as I worked on this book, and who have evinced nothing but delight and pride in its being published. You are my life, my light, and my joy.
But the greatest part of my thanks must go to my husband, Claudio. You’re Italian, not Scottish; you have brown eyes, not blue; you’re an engineer, not a surgeon. But I never would have found Robbie without you.
Glossary of Terms Used in |  |
Natalie Brown/Tangerine Photography
J
ENNIFER
R
OBSON
first learned about the Great War from her father, the acclaimed historian Stuart Robson, and later served as an official guide at the Canadian National Vimy Memorial at Vimy Ridge, France. A former copy editor, she holds a doctorate in British economic and social history from the University of Oxford. She lives in Toronto, Canada, with her husband and young children. This is her first novel.
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A
NYONE
WHO
KNOWS
ME
will also know that I inherited my interest in the First World War from my father, Professor Stuart Robson, who spent much of his career focusing on the history of both world wars. From him I learned not only
why
the Great War matters, but also
how
I ought to go about trying to understand its history. As I was writing
Somewhere in France
, he was gracious enough to act as my sounding board as well as a near-encyclopedic source of information on the finer aspects of its history. The following is my attempt to turn the tables and discover what the First World War means to him, and why it continues to fascinate him after so many years.
Why the Great War? What first captured your attention about it?
As an undergraduate I specialized in the history of modern Germany. When I reached Oxford, however, the ubiquity and centrality of the Great War in that city caught my attention. This was in 1962, only forty-four years after the Armistice. Not long after arriving, I found myself in New College. The memorial to the dead of the Great War was in the entrance to the chapel, off to the side. I suddenly realized how huge it was and paced off its width, which was around thirty feet. I didn’t count the names at the time, but I later learned there are 263 in total.
From that point on I realized the tragedy of the Great War, and though I didn’t focus on it in my teaching until fifteen years later, it was always there, “the heartbreak in the heart of things,” to quote Wilfrid Wilson Gibson.
I think it’s hard for us to understand now, nearly a century later, how the war must have affected the people left behind. Thoughts of the war and all those who had died must have been omnipresent in those early years. But was it something that lasted?
In Juliet Nicolson’s
The Great Silence
, she describes how, during the two minutes of silence that were observed on the first anniversary of the Armistice, the only sound one heard was of women crying. That’s what we would expect from the death of so many sons and lovers. The young are not supposed to go first, and when they do, because that is what war is about, even a society comfortable with death is publicly unglued. Yet five years later the grieving had been sublimated. If the war really was “the heartbreak in the heart of things,” and I think it was, then the thing to notice is that the heart of things is hidden most of the time, and when it is not, it can surprise everyone.
Your Edward, I think, exemplifies all this. He’s a mixture of pain and sangfroid, a man who had a “good war” and who also was smashed to pieces. If he had PTSD, he coped with it as best he could because no one else knew how to help or even knew what PTSD was. The heartbreak would be in his heart, but that is a hiding place.
So much has been written about what happened to men like Edward during the war, but comparatively little about the effect that it had on women, I imagine because relatively few women were part of the armed services. And that’s always disappointed me, mainly because it’s such a fascinating period where women are concerned—this time when they were given a taste of so much freedom and responsibility, only to see it taken away in the postwar period.
It is true that most of the obvious positive changes women experienced during and because of the war were “meantime” changes. One, however, was not, and you capture it well in the figure of Lilly. The change I mean is one of self-consciousness, of how a person saw herself and the world. It’s not like having the vote. It’s hard to measure. But it happened.
To simplify, women were called upon to fulfill novel and challenging roles, and having done so, were dismissed. “Normalcy” returned, or seemed to. In fact, in the minds of women, a huge change had taken place and was remembered, and when the balloon went up again in 1939 and women were again asked to serve, they remembered being fobbed off, they also remembered becoming independent and wonderfully competent, and resolved
this time it would be different
. Well, it wasn’t so different in the immediate postwar period, but then the combined ratchet effect of the two wars hit like a thunderclap.
Social change that comes quickly is not change; real change goes slow, like the tide or the hands of a clock. Nevertheless, to borrow from Galileo, it moves. The force moving history for women in the last century was the wars (plus a dose of inflation, to be unromantic). And that is what
Somewhere in France
captures beautifully.
Earlier you mentioned Edward and the mental agony he endures, and it is true that as I created his character I intended for him to be affected by battle fatigue in addition to other, more perceptible injuries. But I hope I’ve also captured the way that it was possible to suffer terribly, like Edward, but somehow carry on and endure—as he does, at least until he goes missing in no-man’s-land.
Understanding Edward brings up the problem with labels. In Edward’s case, and the case of millions of people coping with distressing memories, we yearn for clear definitions of conditions that have discrete qualifications and thus allow someone to be admitted to the club of sufferers. “Oh yes, she’s bipolar!” But what happens when the criteria aren’t clear?
All too often, then and now, we label one guy as untroubled because he had a “good war” while another guy is branded a mess because he broke down. In fact, the “good warrior” could be someone who healed and carried on, or someone too stupid to react, or someone like Edward, who proclaims himself “a shallow bastard.” And the man who becomes a wretched mess could be someone who snapped not because of the war but because of a straw that landed well after the war and broke his back.
The difficulty in understanding the Edwards of this world is that we must put aside our penchant for labeling. That’s where taking one person, Edward in this case, and paying attention to all the vagaries without presupposing that the dots connect in a recognizable pattern is a very useful exercise.
And then there’s a character like Robbie, whose reaction to the horrors around him seems, I think, fairly typical: you did what you had to do, you did it without whining (although grousing about the bad food, bugs, mud, and other inconveniences was perfectly acceptable), you looked out for your fellows, and you somehow managed to keep yourself from falling apart. Somehow, despite everything, they endured. They carried burdens we would think of as impossible, yet survived and even thrived in their lives after the war.
Exactly. They knew they had a job to do, however nasty, and did it, period. The reward for doing it well was the chance to go home sooner rather than later, which meant fighting aggressively if one was on the line, and being a good surgeon if one was Robbie. They did their part in an unlovely situation and, if they lived, came home, said as little as possible about it, fought their demons as best they could, and carried on.
