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Book: Clearing the fog of a war

Jonathan Hicks, two-thirds of the way through a trilogy of novels on the first world war, tells Paul Simon why we need new perspectives on the conflict as its 100th anniversary draws near

As well as being an emerging fiction writer of considerable talent, Jonathan Hicks is also head teacher at a Cardiff comprehensive and a military historian.

As such, he's as well entitled as any to voice his doubts about the perils of next year's centenary marking the start of the conflict.

"I do come across well-intentioned folk who want to turn commemoration and remembrance into something akin to popular entertainment," he tells me.

"That sits uncomfortably with me, having seen the distress that a death in the first world war can cause to families even now.

"When we look back in 2019 I think that we will see that local communities did it properly, with dignity and feeling."

Hicks's concerns are less to do with the Welsh nation's devolved administration than the Con-Dem cabal in London.

He sits on three Welsh government committees charged with planning the commemoration and, while happy with the direction they are going, hopes that Westminster "doesn't forget the 'other theatres' and sees the next few years as a chance to educate the public that WW1 is about far more than the first day of the Somme and Passchendaele, dreadful though they were."

Hicks' closeness to the impact of the conflict in a Welsh context is demonstrated in detail in his first two Thomas Oscendale's novels, The Dead Of Mametz and Demons Walk Among Us.

Captain Oscendale is a military policeman serving in various theatres of war but who, when back on leave, also gets drawn back into crime-solving in his home patch of Barry.

What makes Hicks's writing so special is the level of detailed knowledge both of the conflict zones and the home front that allows him to create utterly accurate dioramas and believable characters within those.

"I wanted to write a murder mystery set during the period of the Great War, drawing on my knowledge of the army at that time and it seemed a good idea to combine the Home Front elements of a tale with those of the battlefields of the time." he says. He's planned out Oscendale's life before and after the two novels and inserted clues as to future developments in each book.

Yet Hicks is also conscious of the self-aware trainspotter's dilemma - how to avoid packing in absolutely everything he knows about the subject just because he knows absolutely everything.

He sees "a huge danger" that anyone with more than a passing interest in the war will seek to drop in elements which are lost on the average reader.

"There is a real problem in such works of being seen as too clever," he confesses. "To keep me in check I am very grateful to my editor Eifion Jenkins who always pointed out when the military history was getting in the way of the story and the offending section was soon binned!"

It's difficult to juggle the balance between the two fronts - "I might be accused of giving him too much time at home!" - but research shows it was possible for an officer to have frequent periods of leave and given the rail links at the time it was reasonable enough to allow Oscendale to journey home for periods of time.

Hicks's research about life on the home front is taken from contemporary newspapers, interviews with descendants of WWI servicemen and court reports and that makes Hicks surer of the paths he follows in the plot.

Oscendale himself is a believable hero - courageous and fallible, honourable and tetchy. Hicks describes him as someone who "seems doomed to unhappiness and disappointment," and, with a third novel in the making, Hicks has a long-term game plan for him.

"At the start of Demons he was in danger of becoming embittered, given what happened to him in the first novel and prior to 1914.

"Falling in love with Hannah Graham gave him a way back and he took it. Their relationship is not over and more will emerge in the next book.

"A traumatic event took place in Oscendale's life - explored in the third novel - and this had repercussions for his future behaviour. The class issue will be explored as well.

"I don't want to have him bobbing about in every theatre so I think it's time that the bigger picture of his life was allowed to develop."

 

As might be expected, Hicks's literary heroes are the poetic "greats" from the conflict - Owen, Graves, Sassoon and Brooke. Yet it is their very popularity that Hicks believes gets in the way of really understanding what they were trying to articulate.

"It has distorted the view of the war that we should have, limiting the response of the public to fresh interpretations of what actually happened," he declares.

In that quest, Captain Oscendale and his travails in war and in peace will surely continue to challenge and engage readers as much as in the first two novels.

 

The Dead of Mametz and Demons Walk Among Us are published by Y Lolfa at £8.95 each.

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