I'm looking forward to sharing today's post with you as it's an extract from the new book by the talented Liz Trenow entitled; In Love and War. It sounds to be an absolutely touching book and I am sure you will enjoy. Due to be published on 25th January, you won't have very long to wait to fully immerse yourself in this touching story. I hope you enjoy the extract once we've taken a brief look at what it's all about.
In Love and War is written by Liz Trenow, and is due to be published on 25th January 2018 by Pan Macmillan. Available as both Kindle and Paperback and also Audiobook.
Three women, once enemies. Their secrets will unite them.
The First World War is over. The war-torn area of Flanders near Ypres is no longer home to troops, but groups of tourists. Controversial battlefield tourism now brings hundreds of people to the area, all desperate to witness first-hand where their loved ones fell.
At the Hotel de la Paix in the small village of Hoppestadt, three women arrive, searching for traces of the men they have loved and lost.
Ruby is just twenty-one, a shy Englishwoman looking for the grave of her husband. Alice is only a little older but brimming with confidence; she has travelled all the way from America, convinced her brother is in fact still alive. Then there’s Martha, and her son Otto, who are not all they seem to be . . .
The three women in Liz Trenow’s In Love and War may have very different backgrounds, but they are united in their search for reconciliation: to resolve themselves to what the war took from them, but also to what life might still promise for the future . . .
Passchendaele.
The word sliced like a blade. Where Bertie had gone missing. Although she knew
that many thousands had never been identified, or even found, she’d heard that
comrades would sometimes just place a simple stake in the ground, marking it
with whatever came to hand. As the coach trundled onwards, closer and closer to
this place, she found herself clasping her fists so tightly that the nails left
marks in her palms.
‘Although
many men gave their lives in this battle,’ the major was explaining, ‘the
Germans pushed back and occupied the area until September 1918, when the
Belgian army recaptured the ridge in the final push during the last weeks of
the war.’
A
tangle of emotions jangled in her head: excitement, anticipation and, above
all, fear. Much as she knew that finding Bertie’s grave was important for
herself and his family, she could not imagine, now that it was a real
possibility, how she would cope with the reality, the finality of discovering
where he lay, in the ground beneath her feet.
They’d
seen plenty of roadside crosses and memorial stones on their way to Ypres, but
nothing prepared her for the sight of Tyne Cot. As she gazed out at the
thousands of wooden crosses stretched higgledy-piggledy across the field, way
into the distance almost as far as the eye could see, the breath seemed to stop
in her chest. Some were of smooth sanded timber, identified with expertly
carved inscriptions or stamped metal plates. With a sick, chill fascination she
also noticed that many were simply rough planks hastily hammered together with
lettering scratched or burned onto the wood, with garlands of dried flowers
tied to them, an identity tag, a belt buckle, an army cap.
The
major led them forwards along a pathway of packed mud into the graveyard. Every
now and again he would pause, straightening up a cross carefully and reverently,
pushing it more firmly into the ground.
‘I
know some of you may be looking for the graves of loved ones, and we have an
hour now in which you can do so. Please take care of your footing, never stray from the pathways, or touch
or take anything from the ground. There is still a danger of unexploded
ordnance, or something personal that could lead to an identification. Either way, you must not touch. Do I make
myself clear?’
Ruby
wandered from cross to cross in a kind of trance, barely aware of time passing,
reading the inscriptions and willing her eyes to see his name yet at the same
time terrified of doing so. There seemed to be no order: officers lay next to
infantrymen, regiments were all mixed together, there were French names,
Belgian names, English names. All the differences imposed in life had been
erased by death.
Smith, Merton, Bygrave, Freeman, Augustin, Travere, Marchant, Tailler, Brown, Peeters, Dubois, Janssens, Walter, Fellowes, Villeneuve. Perhaps some of these men had known Bertie,
stood by his side in the trenches, shared their rations, spoke of their longing
for home, for their sweethearts, wives, children? As she stumbled along the
rows, gripped by a fierce determination to find her beloved, her eyes began to
play tricks. Any name beginning with a B seemed to halt the blood in her veins.
When she found a cross with the name Barton inscribed upon it, her knees
threatened to buckle beneath her. But it was Michael Peter. Not Bertie.
If
she looked long enough and hard enough she would find him, stand at his grave,
tell him she loved him, ask for his forgiveness, and be able to live the rest
of her life in peace. She could almost sense the relief of it already. And yet,
the further she walked, the more that certainty began to waver. Many crosses
bore only the simple inscription R.I.P,
Known Unto God or, saddest of all, no mark whatsoever. So many thousands of
individual, personal tragedies, so many of them anonymous; a visual
representation of mass slaughter.
Keep breathing, just put one foot in front
of another, she told herself. Hollander, Frost, Blundell, Taylor, Kelly, Schofield, Allen, Carter, Meredith, Brown, Pullen, Masters, Wade, Francis, McCauley, Titmuss, Archer . . . the parade of the lost
went on and on.
And
then, the worst shock of all, gripping at her heart like a vice: dozens of
crosses with German names. Müller, Schulz, Schmidt, Schneider, Fischer, Weber, Becker, Wagner, Hoffmann, Koch, Bauer, Klein, Wolf, Schröder, Neumann, Braun, Zimmermann, Krüger, Hartmann, lying cheek by jowl with their enemies.
Had
one of Bertie’s bullets killed the man now lying by his side? Had the shell
they fired, shouting ‘For King and Country’, or hailing the Kaiser, blown to
pieces the men now their neighbours in death? So many husbands, brothers and
sons, all now gone. What an absurdity, such a terrible waste. And all for what?
What further evidence could ever be needed of the futility of war? Far from
making sense of it all, she was becoming more bewildered by the hour.
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