Lost Soul

I first bought a book by Malika Gandhi because the central theme of the book concerned the partition of the Indian sub-continent and all the horrors that went with it. That Partition has always interested me because I was involved with another partition that  that followed it - the partition of Palestine in 1948.
I can never understand why the UN voted for the Partition of Palestine after they had seen the tragic consequences  in India and had been warned by the British that partition was not a option  for a country the size of Wales with water resources confined to  particular areas meaning water had to be piped from afar to irrigate the most fertile soils -  but enough of my rant!  I enjoyed the book of Malika;s that I had bought with its mix of history, magical realism and romance. so was pleased to find myself sitting next to Malika in a writers meet-up  in the Midlands and found her an interesting personality.
When she ask me and several others on facebook  to put the promotion of her latest book on my blog I was only too ready to do so.
Unfortunately I didn't realise the transitory nature of the blog tour she was taking part in and when her material arrived on the 15th I set it aside until the worst of a personal crisis I was going through was over. However,  an email on my computer  a few minutes ago alerted me to the fact that this is the final day of her blog tour,  so I've set aside my work and hope this hasn't been composed in too much haste.If you're quick you'll still be in time to buy and claim your freebie
Here is what Malika has sent me.

 by Malika Gandhi

A story of a spirit who has been alone for over a hundred years, who suffers her dead mother’s wrath. Will she ever be forgiven?

.....

When a Soul begins to ask questions, she expects answers. 
Aanchal wanders the lonely haveli (Indian mansion) at night. The villagers become aware of a presence and fear a girl never seen in their midst. 
Who is she and where did she come from? Who turns the lights on in the old ruin every night? 

Aanchal is not afraid of the villagers who want her banished, but she is afraid of her mother's yearly visit from the Other Side. Aanchal wants to be forgiven but will she have to pay a price before she is granted her wish? 

When Kunaal arrives with Jennifer, Aanchal sees the chance to right what went wrong, but she will need help. Will her friends help her? Will her mother's spirit forgive her? Will she finally be ready to cross over? 

Lost Soul - a harrowing tale of expectations and long-awaited hope. 

Free 15-17^th July 2015 – don’t miss out!

Amazon link:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B00THMNDW4?*Version*=1&*entries*=0

As a THANK YOU for reading this book, Malika Gandhi would like to offer you a free ebook of any of her other titles. All you have to do is subscribe to her mailing list, and she will get straight back to you!

Just go to this link!

http://eepurl.com/bqdnc5

Jim's escape from a Bulgarian Prison

One reader has asked me how Jim Shepard escaped from prison in Bulgaria.  I originally had Addy describe it when she is talking about Jim close to the beginning of the novel, 'Patsy'. I deleted it, however,  as I felt I was trying the reader's patience a little too far with Addy's long speech. I know Addy is voluble, but there are limits. Anyway if any reader wants to know here is the answer.

 Jim was in a rural prison near the mountainous border with Greece. He had been able to work out roughly where he were after the  the Bulgarians had taken him off the train and driven him away in a car, because he knew the Germans always kept an exact distance between telegraph poles.He had been able to see out of the car's front window although the Bulgarians had curtained off all the other windows. 

Much to Addy's annoyance Jim always kept  nails , screws and nuts in his jacket pockets.  In those days men had two sections to their pockets, the large one big enough for their hands and a small one for coins. When the car passed a telephone pole Jim put a nail in the small pocket, when they turned a corner he put in a nut.

Jim was kept in a locked room  that led off from the guard's room while the Bulgarian guards waited for the German interrogators to collect him.

The guards played cards and drank local wine while on duty. One day in a rush to get back to the card game one of the guards left the room unlocked after delivering a meal.  Jim waited until the guards were engrossed in a fierce argument over a card game and slipped round the back of the room and out of the open outside door-(presumably the guards wanted warning to clear up and look busy before  the Germans entered the building). 

It was only a short distance to the Greek border. Once in Greece, Jim cadged lifts with  Greek soldiers and made his way to Athens where he caught the last convoy out before the Germans took over.

WW1 Crossing the sinai and the Negev

I can't get away from WW1 in the Middle East this week.  Another blog about a soldier of the the Egyptian Expeditionary Force.

Infantry crossing the Sinai on the wire road

The veteran of hell-hole Gallipoli marches with his unit along the mesh wire road unrolling across the Sinai towards Ottoman territory.  

Building the railway at Al-Arish

Beneath a relentless sun,  he takes his turn  to guard the  Egyptian Labour force creating the  railway  that slowly chases the temporary road.  Rapidly drying sweat on his face proves a magnet for flies.

A Camel Convoy being loaded.

  He views with thirsty eyes a  thousand-strong convoy of camels plodding past,  bearing  water, food, equipment, iron rails and wooden sleepers to the camp he’d be heading for when night stopped work.

German aircraft over the Negev 1916

The sound of enemy aircraft has him dropping to ground, curling up, his heels digging into his backside, his head beneath his chest. The bombs still find him. His body lies fragmented,  inextricably mixed  with those of  Egyptian labourers.

Although his unrecognisable body may be buried in an unmarked common grave, this soldier  has  his name engraved in stone in his native village and is remembered in his regiment’s records.

The civilian Egyptian labourers, however,who literally paved the way for the Allies eventual victory,  remain  forgotten by all.

Inspired by Siobhan Logan's workshop, organised by Writing East Midlands,  

Soldiering with the Egyptian Expeditionary Force

GAZA 1917

The soldier above was just one of a vast army that brought about victory for the British Commonwealth against the Turkish Ottoman Empire  in WW1.  The soldier's name was Arthur Llewelyn Jones of the Royal Army Medical Corps; the army’s name the Egyptian Expeditionary Force. 

  

By the time of the third battle of Gaza, the Egyptian Expeditionary Force was over 35 000, strong encompassing  divisions from all over the commonwealth. This large  army's  name, however, carried little significance for the British public.  Even after they lost 7000 men in their second attempt to capture Gaza   the British press reported the battle as a minor skirmish.  

After that failed second attempt both sides dug in for the long, hot Palestinian summer, while they waited for reinforcements

.

 Most people seem to know about trench warfare in France and Belgium but few have heard of the  Egyptian Expedition's trenches and dugouts. Their dugouts were cave-like holes in the sandstone side of the wadi Ghazzeh.  Their enemies, the Turks had dug themselves into  similar dugouts on the other side of the wadi.  

While over in in France British and German trenches were so close the occupants could throw stones at each other, in Palestine, even at the narrowest point of the wadi, at least 800 yards separated British from Turks.  As the wadi widened while meandering  inland the British cavalry on the eastern  flank were no less than ten miles from the enemy.  

The wadi Ghazzeh  not only marked the boundary between British and Turks  but also separated cultivated land from wilderness.  When Arthur stood on the cliff top above his dugout his eyes rested on  fertile fields and orchards surrounding the then beautiful city of Gaza but, on his side of the wadi there was only uncultivated wilderness.   This wilderness was not the sandy desert of the Sahara but undulating stony ground dotted with plants that could live through summer drought. True, there were sand dunes where land approached sea, but they were more an extension of the beach than desert. Camels plodded through this wilderness from the railhead now 14 miles to their rear, to bring food and ammunition.  Arthur Llewelyn Jones, along with the other foot soldiers, had also marched all the way from the Suez Canal across that wilderness on the wire road laid down for infantry use by the Royal Engineers. While marching he had  helped guard the native labourers working on the Sinai Military Railway that brought  rations from Egypt.

 Lack of water became the British  army's main problem that summer. When the soldiers had first dug in, a winter river  had flowed through the wadi.  It, however, rapidly dried up and the infantry  had to spend their days drilling wells in the wadi bed.  The water they found proved insufficient for the cavalry sections  so squads were given the task of guarding, against aerial attacks,  25 000 camels padding along  the wire road from the railhead each carrying two 15 gallon containers,  When the camels arrived at the wad, the cavalry emptied the water into natural indentations lined with tarpaulin.  

So the army sat out the summer, entertaining  themselves with night forays on the enemy until, at the beginning of November, they fought and won the decisive battle that opened the way to Jerusalem,  Damascus  Alleppo and the Armistice of Mudros.

Arthur Llewelyn Jones, however was not there to witness the victory.  He was killed on 7^th May 1917. A Turkish shell landed directly on his dugout.

D-Day elsewhere

British  troops examine a knocked-out German StuG III assault gun near Cassino, Italy, 18 May 1944.

June 6^th 1944 has been well and truly commemmorated as D-Day in Normandy this year but  now media attention has faded it is appropriate to remember that other events vital to the ending of the war in Europe were taking place in Italy..

Eleven months prior to D-Day a successful invasion of Sicily had forced the Axis to undertake their own Dunkirk-type operation from Sicily to mainland Italy. By Autumn the Allies had landed three armies on the mainland. 

By November Special Ops(M), which employed the main character in my novel, Patsy, were up and running in Bari, a sea-side town on the East coast facing Yugoslavia..

 Soon after Patsy arrived in Bari the Italians surrendered although the Germans continue to occupy northern Italy. .  By D-Day the allies had taken Rome and were  pushing their way north towards the Germans' last defensive line.

Mediterranean Spring

Turkish Poppies

In  April  I was fortunate enough to enjoye a week’s coach tour of Turkey’s Lycian coast and rugged mountains. The area is renowned for its ancient monuments so we spent  much of our time tramping round ancient ruins in various stages of restoration. Although fascinated by these classical and Christian sites I was even more enthralled by the botanical features of a Mediterranean spring. Of all the many  wild flowers in bloom that month the blood-red poppy was the most conspicuous.

It has always puzzled me why so many Israelis confuse their sturdy , flamboyant Judaean anemones with poppies. The poppies, I remember seeing  in Palestine  were more like the fragile vermillion poppies  we have in Britain. On the Lycian coast , however, we saw poppies which, unless viewed at close range, could easily be mistaken for the anemones  that turned the hillsides round Jerusalem crimson each spring.

Anemones in \israel photographed bt Etan J Tal

 Another plant, a small tree, covered in purple sweet pea shaped flowers, caught the eye of everyone on the coach. It is known as the Judas tree from the legend that this was the tree from which the traitor apostle Judas hanged himself.

Although the crimson anemones play a starring role in my emotional recollections childhood, strangely the Judas tree  in all its springtime glory does not feature in any childhood memory.  All I recall  is my father , in the height of arid summer, pointing at an insignificant tree growing on a rocky hillside, and telling me the associated legend.   This has reinforced my realization of how very selective my memories are.

Incidentally, on my return to England I saw a Judas tree in lower a few houses down the road from my daughter's house in Market Harborough. Now I know it will grow in England I am adding it to my wish list. If I get to plant it though it will  be in my garden not for the deeply sentimental reasons I grow my my fig and apricot trees and  my anemones and miniature cyclamen but purely as a souvenir of my holiday in Turkey.  

WW1 in Palestine and further afield

Ottoman Troops defending Gaza-  Picture by American Colony restored by  Durova

Over the last fortnight I've been reading memoirs set on either side of the the time frame for the 'Land of Broken Promises' trilogy.  On the left hand side of the frame, as I visualize it, are memoirs describing events in Palestine during WW1 (and yes, despite all the arguments one hears to the contrary, the area  that became the British Mandate of Palestine, post WW1, was referred to as Palestine in Victorian, Edwardian and WW1 literature.)  On the right hand side are books describing events in that area since the 1948 partition. Today I want to talk about a book from the left hand pile. There is another on the right hand pile I want to discuss in a later post.

THE FIFTH BATTALION HIGHLAND LIGHT INFANTRY IN THE War 1914-1918 by COLONEL F.L. MORRISON, C.B., D.S.O., V.D. is an invaluable book for anyone who wants to to take a wider view of WW1 .  The good news is that it is free for download in several formats from Gutenberg.

In this detailed account of daily life with the battalion we travel with  it from Scotland to Egypt and on to trench warfare in  Gallipoli in 1915 then back to Egypt and tents in 1916. There the battalion becomes part of the Egyptian Expeditionary Force (EEF)for the invasion of Palestine, 

The EEF re-occupies the Sinai desert and marches through the Negev, building a railway behind it and laying down a chicken wire road in front for the convenience of marching infantry.A convoy of thousands of camels carry water and rations to the troops from wherever the railway has reached,   The EEF's progress is halted outside Gaza  where  it digs into hillsides on the fringes of the wilderness and the troops gaze in frustration at the fertile land in front of them.  For  Gaza at that time is very different from the town that exists today. It is an important depot for cereals with a German steam mill.  Barley, wheat, olives, vineyards, orange groves, and wood for fuel are grown as well as many goats grazed.   Maize, millet, beans, and water melon, all harvested in early autumn, are cultivated nearby.  The produce isn't just for local use and trade isn't all one way. Before WW1. barley was exported to England for brewing into English beer. In 1912 the 40,000 inhabitants of Gaza imported £10,000 of yarn from Manchester.

After two defeats the EEF captures Gaza and the battalion moves on to help defeat the Ottoman army throughout Palestine.  

From a conquered Palestine the Battalion sails, in the spring of 1918, on to Southern France and from there travels by train to take  part in the final stages of trench warfare in the North.  This is the point at which I would usually close the book and take up the next in my ever-increasing list of book-to-read. However, curiosity overcame my self-inflicted timetable and I carried on reading.

It was in the French portion of the story that  I received my biggest shock. For some reason  I have always assumed that only Germans used poison gas as a weapon during WW1  so on reading the following paragraph:

“When at La Lacque we received our gas training. It took the form of a route march to a place six miles away, where the whole Division being assembled as at sports, various demonstrations were made, including the firing of projectors—tabloid gas training.”

I assumed the training was designed so the battalion could set up defences against gas attacks.

It was only when I read the following paragraph later in the chapter that my illusions were shattered.

About this time a number of gas beam attacks were made from our line. These were from the infantry point of view a great advance on the old system, which meant man-handling innumerable heavy gas cylinders up the trench system to the firing-line. By the new system a light railway was run forward to the front line and all the infantry had to do was to push the bogeys forward. When all were in position the gas expert turned a handle and a poisonous mixture hissed off towards the enemy. What casualties, if any, were inflicted we never heard; we certainly had a number as the result of enemy retaliation by shell fire.

I am glad I  continued reading that memoir after  the battalion had moved from Palestine,  even if it does leave me wondering how many more comforting assumptions I make  about the actions of my own country.