Missing in Action Presumed Dead WW1

Chris Clark, a soldier from Sheffield, is fighting on the Western Front. Siggi Haas, a soldier from Berlin, is also fighting on the Western Front. They were just ordinary young men before the war started and now, their lives have been cast to Fate. Chris worked in a steelworks and was happy with his lot. Siggi was an assistant history teacher and looking forward to becoming a good teacher. They were uprooted from their normal environment and thrust into a world of war, as so many others were. They knew nothing of war and assumed it to be something gallant and adventurous. They even assumed they might enact some heroic deed.

There were so many heroes in the Great War and so many battles that I have not mentioned because this is a story based mainly, but not entirely, on the Western Front. It concentrates on the events surrounding Chris and Siggi, being the British Army and the German Army.

The words of the soldiers, sailors, airmen and leaders have been taken from letters, diaries, memoirs or documents — real people experiencing real events. However, Chris Clark, his family and friends are fictional, as are Siggi Haas, his family and friends. Some of the men in this book died in the Great War, some lived and some endured something in between living and death.

Princetown and the Conscientious Objectors of WW1

Over 16,000 men refused to fight in WW1 and became known as Conscientious Objectors.

Their initial incarceration in prison was deemed unsuitable for many and they were then sent to work centres to be engaged on work of national importance.

One such work centre was in the village of Princetown, Devon, home of the notorious Dartmoor Prison.

This book explores its change of purpose to that of work centre and the daily life, type of work and health of those COs held there. It also looks at the impact of their arrival on the local community and the attitudes of the village residents towards them.

Stigmata of Auschwitz

The Stigmata of Auschwitz is the brief story of the life and love of Rebekah and Gabriel.

The two main characters of the story are a young Jewish couple whose lives bringing up their young child are cut short and sacrificed to an evil Nazi ideology.

The story takes place between March 1938 to September 1941, in the time of the Shoah (the Holocaust).

Gabriel is from Budapest in Hungary, where he is sent on a mission to Munkács in Western Ukraine. There he meets Rebekah. They fall in love, marry and settle in Munkács, where the population is 42% Jewish.

In Munkács Gabriel and Rebekah build up a successful business and public life: he becomes a councillor representing the Jewish community, while she is a member of the Union of Jewish Women. To complete their enviable lifestyle, they have a much-loved baby son.

But their dream is destroyed by the antisemitism unleashed at the outbreak of the Second World War; their life together is ruined by the ruling fascist elite. Consequently, they have departed to Auschwitz, where they are murdered.

However, their two-year-old son is rescued and raised by their neighbour.

The Blackpool Landlady and Son

When 18-year-old Helen Ashton meets Joe McCarthy on the moors of Northumberland she instantly falls in love, certain that her humdrum life had taken a new turn. And for several years it did.

On the eve of the First World War, Helen learns that she is pregnant with Joe’s child, but before she can tell him, he enlists in the army and is despatched to war. She never heard from Joe again, and believed him dead.

When their son, Ben, was born, Helen, in mounting desperation, agreed to marry a retired police inspector with whom she had two children.

In time, her husband of convenience leaves Helen for another woman, and she finds herself on her own in the coastal resort of Blackpool with three young children with only a penurious future to look forward to. But fate intervenes, and with growing confidence Helen turns their home into a holiday hotel and begins welcoming guests. From one she learns that her beloved Joe had not died, but had been discharged into a sanatorium where he languished, a shadow of his former self, depressed, uncertain, confused … and lost, lacking the courage to reconnect with Helen.

By the time of Helen’s death, Joe is living a reclusive life, and his son, Ben, married with children of his own, takes over the Blackpool hotel. It is Ben’s wife, childhood friend Mary, who tracks down Ben’s father, finally persuading Ben to meet him … on the day Joe dies.

Sipho's War

1916. Europe is in the grip of a deadly war, the Battle of the Somme spewing grotesquely mutilated bodies. Into this mayhem come 57 Swazi men from a British Protectorate in southern Africa, most of whom have never worn shoes or seen motorised vehicles.

The biting cold chews at digits used to the heat of an African sun but they are brave these men, they do what they came to do with stoic resilience.

Sipho Vilakazi is the son of a teacher and a nurse, who longs to escape the confines of his mountain village – volunteering for this war is an answer to his prayers. Until a sworn enemy of his family also signs up.

Thembi, the love of his life, is furious that he should leave without her. ‘I will return,’ he says confidently, ‘with enough money to pay the bride price for you.’

For Sipho, his friend Vusi, and Mandla, the headman’s son, their time in Europe awakens a desire to know and understand more of the ways of this world to help their nation progress.

As their time in Europe draws to an end, they are infused with new energy when they are moved to Le Havre and the ships that will take them home. But their return is delayed and one afternoon tragedy strikes.

The shadow that settles over the group reaches beyond the boundaries of Europe, over sea and land, to the tiny village on the slopes of the mountain they call Ngwenya.

Survival: A Story of Friendship – Part 2

Survival: A Story of Friendship – Part 2 is about the voyage Freddy and his mother, Helene, take to escape Europe and the ravages of World War II. After promising Sigmund on his deathbed that they would reunite the family in a peaceful and friendly country, they make their way via ship to Colombia, the country Nellie had made her home just as the Nazi movement in Germany was gaining momentum. After their safe arrival, Freddy is forced to look for work in order to support his mother and himself while adjusting to new surroundings at the same time. After some fortuitous, work-related encounters, Freddy decides to not only run his own lingerie business but produce the raw materials he needs himself.

This is the story of how someone who was unable to complete school or go to university, due to strictly unfortunate circumstances, had the vision and skills to found a company that would provide jobs and well-being. Thus giving back to the country that granted him what the German Nazi government had taken away from him: his nationality.

The Sash and the Crucifix

Lance-Corporal Edward Vickers, was born on the 12^th July 1900, in the Tigers Bay area of Belfast, under the shadow of Harland and Wolff Shipyard. Edward and his four friends watched some of the greatest ships ever to be built, as they towered over their streets. These five friends made a playground out of the shipyard and got to play on the decks of the greatest ship ever built, The Titanic. As they got older, WW1 shattered their lives like countless others. What they had to endure was hard to comprehend, but this first hand story had to be told. Not only was his story about WW1, but WW2 as well, where he had to fight his way through Belgium and France yet again, to get to the Dunkirk beaches.

Through his life he had some unforgettable ups, but they were overshadowed by unthinkable downs.

Edwards’s story is a remarkable one; of life through the wars, abroad and at home, and it’s a story that spans 105 years of his remarkable life.

Treasures of War

Leningrad, 1941.

Germany’s Operation Barbarossa is tightening its noose around the city. The Neva River and Lake Ladoga freeze. Few supplies reach the city. Thousands suffer from cold and starvation.

Katuska and Nina Koslov, young daughters of a dedicated museum employee, shelter in the basement of the great Hermitage Museum—once the palace of Tsars. As insulation to meagre coats, their mother sews ‘found’ canvases into the linings.

Upon the death of their parents, the girls begin a new chapter in their lives with the hidden paintings cherished as mementos of parental love.

We accompany Katuska and Nina on an obstacle-filled journey through war and its challenging aftermath. We accompany the ‘found’ paintings, also known to some as ‘stolen art’, on journeys through Europe, England, the US and the Soviet Union.

Leaves in a Holocaust Wind

The Holocaust, the final solution for Jews, is infamous in history. Robert Dawson's Leaves in a Holocaust Wind is the story of another community that suffered in the Holocaust: the Gypsies. Told by Demeter Fox and Zuzzi, Leaves in a Holocaust Wind follows their journey to freedom in the German occupied territory of Slovakia. From the horrors of slaughter in the woods, the lies of a safe future, the concentration camp of Majdanek and the hiding away in the countryside, Fox and Zuzzi must come to terms with what they have witnessed and find the courage to survive until freedom comes. It is a novel of the playful mind-set and culture of the Romanies in the face of a most brutal regime, and in which most of the major events are based on real incidents.