Читать книгу Private Peaceful - Michael Morpurgo, Michael Morpurgo - Страница 7

Of course both Private Peaceful and War Horse take place in the First World War.

War Horse came first, way back in 1982, a story inspired by a chance meeting in my local pub all those years ago with an old veteran who lived in our village. From my talks with him and with two other old men of that generation, I found out so much about that war, about life at home and in the trenches. One of these old soldiers had been to war, ‘with horses’, as he put it. Those meetings and the surprise discovery in the attic of four contemporary drawings of cavalry fighting in the First World War, provided the seed corn for War Horse.

Sadly, the book did not do that well when it came out, sold very few copies, failed to win a prize, received mixed reviews, but the few who did read it seemed to like it. Because of this I was invited to a conference of children’s writers and illustrators from all over the world who had tackled the difficult subject of war. It took place in Ypres in Belgium, the town that had been fought over fiercely in the First World War. There, battles had resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of soldiers on both sides, and the town became synonymous with the endurance and suffering of that terrible war. They held this conference in one of the greatest of all war museums, In Flanders Fields, so called because of John Macrae’s iconic poem.

I went with my friend, Michael Foreman, who had already written and illustrated two remarkable books set in war, War Game and War Boy. We went off together one morning to spend some time in the museum, and arranged to meet outside in the square afterwards. No war museum is more deeply engaging or informative or heart-breaking. But I found myself unable to stay long. It was simply too upsetting, as indeed a war museum should be. As I was leaving, I saw up on the wall, in a frame, a typed letter with its envelope. Intrigued, I went closer. It was from a captain in the army to the mother of a soldier, informing her in just few short lines that her son had been shot at dawn for cowardice. I read the address and name on the envelope, saw the jagged tear she had made opening it, knew at once that this letter destroyed her life, and the lives of her family. I could see her in my mind’s eye, standing there on her doorstep, letter in hand. I could feel her grief and her pain.

I knew then that I had to know more about the soldiers who had been executed in that war. I was able to see documents of their court martial trials – some lasting less than an hour, for a man’s life. I found out how there were over 3,000 soldiers condemned to death for cowardice in the face of the enemy, for desertion. Two were shot for falling asleep on sentry duty. Of these about 300 had their sentences confirmed and were shot. Many had clearly been suffering from shell shock – post traumatic stress disorder we call it these days. Some had already been hospitalised for it. It was evident to me that there was little justice here, more retribution. Very often the men had no one to represent them. It was capital punishment imposed quite deliberately to encourage other soldiers to obey orders.

I read in my research at the museum how these executions were carried out. At dawn, in a farm yard, or prison yard, out in a field, up against a hedge, the prisoner was tied to a post, blindfolded and then shot by a firing squad, sometimes composed of his comrades from his own company. I visited some of the places this had happened, stood where they had stood. I visited their graves. And I knew I had to write the story of one of these unfortunate men, ‘worthless men’ as one had been called as he was sentenced at his trial.

On my return home I discovered that all these years later, despite all the campaigning of the families of the executed to persuade governments to pardon those men shot at dawn, still there was a refusal to acknowledge that terrible injustices had been done. So I determined then to tell the story of one of these men, the life story from childhood home to the trenches to the firing squad.

I set the story in my village, in the farms and fields around me, in my cottage at home, the place where the soldier was born and grew up, where he went to school, where he fished in the rivers, scrimped apples – actually the same village where the story of War Horse takes place, where Joey is born and grew up. Much that I had learnt when I visited Ypres, and from those old men in the village all those years before when I was writing War Horse, I incorporated into this new story. It was, after all, the same war, the same horror, the same suffering.

I decided to become my soldier, tell it in the first person, speak it down onto the page, my thoughts and memories during the last long night before the execution at dawn. I had to live as close to the story as possible. I would have no numbered chapters, but instead simply the time as I look at my watch, as the hours pass, as 6 o’clock comes ever closer. I trace my life, to make the night as long as my life, to postpone the fatal hour.

Unlike War Horse, this book was an instant success. It did receive great reviews, mostly, did win a prize or two, did sell well. Within a year it was on the stage, adapted into a powerful one-man show by Simon Reade. It travelled the country, received rave reviews wherever it went. It travelled the world. Then Tom Morris at the National Theatre approached me with the idea of making a play of War Horse, a book which had been ignored for twenty-five years or more, though never out of print, thanks to my publishers who kept the faith!

War Horse turned out to be the greatest hit the National Theatre has ever had. It has also travelled the world from Germany, to the US, to Japan and China. Next year it will tour the UK again. And there have been films and radio plays of both War Horse and Private Peaceful.

But both books, although set in amongst the suffering of war at home and on the battlefield, are essentially about our longing for peace.

Both are my anthems for peace.

Michael Morpurgo, 2016