A Whispered Name
Page 34
The sky was hard and bright. It was cold, and the pink and russet tiles of the monastery sparkled with frost. Small birds floated round the bell tower.
‘Take me back to Larkwood, Watchman,’ said Anselm, putting his arm round Sylvester. ‘I want to go home.’
Acknowledgements
For steadfast guidance and support I extend my warmest thanks to Ursula Mackenzie and Joanne Dickinson at Little, Brown, and to Araminta Whitley and Lucy Cowie at LAW. On Gaelic translation and orthography, I am indebted to the kind and generous assistance of Diarmuid Ó Giolláin at University College Cork. Various staff members of the Public Records Office were enormously helpful and I thank them for their professionalism and defining courtesy. A special word of gratitude goes to my friend Lucy Crawley who made available to me the diary of her grandfather, Major Leslie Peppiatt MC. His testimony, modestly written, exemplifies the astonishing forbearance and courage of the men who fought in the Great War. I hope something of his and their nobility has found its way into the pages of this novel. No book is written without the extensive collaboration of one’s family, the partnership that makes withdrawal to write a possibility. For this and so much more, I thank Anne and our three children. As always, we are grateful to the communities at Bec near whom we have the privilege to live and work.
The statistical anomaly regarding death sentences passed on Irish soldiers during the First World War, cited in the text, was taken from Worthless Men: Race, eugenics and the death penalty in the British Army during the First World War, by Gerard Oram, (Francis Boutle, 1998). I doubt if anyone can touch upon the subject of Field General Courts Martial during the First World War without recourse to the work of J. Putkowski & Julian Sykes, G. Oram, and C. Corns & J. Hughes-Wilson. I am indebted to them all.
Author’s Note
As the narrative makes clear, once Third Ypres was underway operations came to a halt on the 28th August and did not recommence until the 20th of September. During this period the weather was, as one commentator puts it, ‘mercifully dry’. On either side of these dates, during the fighting, it poured with rain. It is into this haunting time of reprieve that I have situated the trial of Joseph Flanagan.
This novel is not about FGCMs in general. It does not imply a comprehensive critique of First World War executions from any perspective, be that historical, legal, or moral. Rather, one might say, it is a parable of how a man found meaning in death, and how another – on seeing that – found faith in life. And it is about a fictional trial that cannot be compared with any genuine case. That said, the details surrounding Flanagan’s FGCM and his subsequent execution are drawn from myriad real events, gathered from memoirs, reports, published research, Battalion War Diaries, Adjutant and Quartermaster General War Diaries, and the original transcripts of the trials held at the PRO. As a matter of history, then, one might fairly say that Flanagan’s experience of military justice was not out of the ordinary. Men and youths regularly appeared before a court without representation. On the other side of the table, notwithstanding best intentions, the court’s members were not always qualified to handle evidence or procedure. Trials could be swift. A death sentence would be passed if a man had absented himself from an important duty (the troops had been frequently warned that this was the case). The review procedure involved not just an evalu ation of the evidence and the state of discipline in the relevant unit, but also the weighing of a man’s life by its worth – always militarily, and sometimes socially. Personal circumstances don’t seem to have carried much weight. The transcripts carry the heavy marks of coloured crayon and the reader can almost hear the thinking of that analyst from a very different time. Chaplains tried to give a meaning to the dawn. Alcohol could be a last refuge. Twice a monastery was the site of an execution. Less ordinary (perhaps) but nonetheless true details are these: on at least one occasion, chits were sent to the OC Companies of a battalion requiring them to organise a firing party, and they all refused; a man did drive through the night to plead, unsuccessfully, for the life of a condemned soldier; another did die in a gas mask; and a handkerchief did fall as a signal to the firing party. There can, perhaps, be little that is more painful to read than these last confessions. That is what they read like, to me.
To such happenings Herbert Moore is a kind of witness, as he is to the entire battle for Passchendaele; a single voice for the reader to hear and follow throughout the summer and autumn of 1917. Consequently, his battalion does not track the movement or experience of any unit that actually fought for the Salient or saw it surrendered. The numeration relating to Army, Corp, Division, Brigade, and Battalion is fictitious, as are the titles of key regiments and the numbers of individual soldiers (save 4888, which belonged to my grandfather, a Lancashire Fusilier during the Soudan Campaign).
The Gilbertines were an English monastic order that did not survive the Reformation. References in the text to ‘The Rule’ are to that of Saint Benedict.
One matter of geography: there are no islands facing Brandon Bay on the west coast of Ireland: Inisdúr and Inismín are inventions.
The following is not a bibliography, but the interested reader will be greatly assisted (as I was) by the following references:
On First World War executions:
Public Records Office: WO 71/387-1027 (trials which ended in execution), WO 93/49 (Summary of Capital Trials), WO 213/1-34 (Courts Martial Registers, FGCM).
Shot at Dawn, J. Putkowski & J. Sykes (Leo Cooper, 1989, New & Revised Edition, 1992)
Blindfold and Alone, C. Corns & J. Hughes-Wilson (Cassell, 2001)
Military Executions during World War 1, G. Oram (Palgrave Macmillan, 2003)
Worthless Men, Race, eugenics and death penalty in the British Army during the First World War, G. Oram (Francis Boutle, 1998)
The Thin Yellow Line, William Moore (Leo Cooper, 1974)
Military Law in WW1, G. R. Rubin (RUSI Journal, vol 143, no 1, February 1998)
On the Battle for Passchendaele:
They Called it Passchendaele, Lyn Macdonald (Macmillan, 1978)
Passchendaele, The Untold Story, R. Prior & Trevor Wilson (Yale University Press, 1996)
Ypres, 1917, Norman Gladden (William Kimber, 1967)
On Boy Soldiers:
Boy Soldiers of the Great War, Richard van Emden (Headline, 2005)
Memoirs:
From the Somme to the Armistice, the Memoirs of Captain Stormont-Gibbs (William Kimber, 1986)
Soldier from the War Returning, Charles Carrington (Hutchinson, 1965)
A Passionate Prodigality, Guy Chapman (Leatherhead, 1990)
The Men I Killed, A Selection From The Writings of General F.P. Crozier (Athol Books, 2002))
Poor Bloody Infantry, Bernard Martin (John Murray, 1987)
Chaplains:
The Great War as I saw It, Canon F.G. Scott (Clarke & Stuart, 1934)
‘Happy Days’ in France and Flanders, Father Benedict Williamson (Harding and Moore, 1921)
Merry in God, A Life of Father William Doyle SJ (Longmans, Green and Co, 1939)
Novels:
The Secret Battle, A.P. Herbert, (Methuen, 1919)
Her Privates We, Frederic Manning (first unexpurgated version 1930, Serpent’s Tail, 1999)
Generally:
Imperial War Museum Book of the Western Front, Malcolm Brown (BCA, 1993)
Forgotten Voices of the Great War, Max Arthur (Ebury Press, 2002)
Tommy, The British Soldier on the Western Front 1914 -1918, Richard Holmes (Harper Perennial, 2005)
Call to Arms, The British Army 1914 – 1918, Charles Messenger (Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 2005)
Forgotten Victory, The First World War: Myths and Realities, Gary Sheffield (Headline, 2001)
WILLIAM BRODRICK was an Augustinian friar before leaving the order to become a lawyer and novelist. Winner of of the Crime Writers’ Association Gold Dagger Award, he is the author of The Discourtesy of Death, The Day of the Lie, A Whispered Name, and three other novels featuring Fat
her Anselm, which are also forthcoming from Overlook.
Printed in the United States Copyright © 2017 The Overlook Press
Jacket illustration: Andrzej Klimowski
Jacket design: Talia Rochmann
Also available from Overlook:
The Discourtesy of Death
978-1-4683-1427-4
The Day of the Lie
978-14683-1575-2
THE OVERLOOK PRESS
NEW YORK, NY
WWW.OVERLOOKPRESS.COM