Writing Blood and Bandages – fighting for life in the RAMC Field Ambulance 1940-46. Part two: “Its heart was buried under a mountain of facts.”

This blog first appeared in 2017, and is the second of six blogs on how I wrote Blood and Bandages.  Part one is here.

I’m sharing my journey with the book’s many fans and to encourage new writers who may be faltering with their projects. Writing isn’t easy and the route is littered with pot-holes. I fell into most and created new ones for good measure. I hope you do neither, but if you do, understand that it’s not fatal. It’s just a test of your commitment and resilience. Press on and have faith.  I’m not special. If my first book got published, yours can too.

I hope you enjoy part two. Part three will appear on 17th February 2022.

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I fudged it.
I couldn’t give up scriptwriting. I loved it too much, but neither could I ignore my new found obligation. Pragmatism was required, so, in my naviety, I just added, ‘write Bill’s book,’ to my to-do list.

I was determined to give it 100% effort to match that given by those of whom I was writing, notwithstanding my intention to give the same to my scripts. Such impossible goals deserved impossible time frames,  so I gave myself two years to write a book and an original screenplay. I rolled up my sleeves and instructed my sub-conscious to start on the script whilst I worked on the book.

I imagined the book in terms of a stone being dropped into a millpond. Bill’s story was the stone and each ripple represented context. The closer to the impact, the greater the detail. The first, and closest, was that of the 214th field ambulance. Next, its sister field ambulance, the 167th, and the Royal Army Medical Corps. Then the 56th (London) Division, the Eighth and Fifth Armies,  with the history of the Second World War being furthest from the stone.

I wanted to use as much first hand material as possible, so I returned to the National Archives to copy the war diaries of the 167th field ambulance, reports from the 56th (London) Division and any other material which could shed light on Bill’s story, however loosely connected. I read out of print books dedicated to the Italian Campaign like, ‘The Gothic Line’ by Douglas Orgill (1967), ‘The Campaign in Italy’ by Eric Linklater (1951) and more contemporary sources like, Norman Lewis’ ‘Naples ’44’, Matthew Parker’s ‘Monte Cassino‘ and Lloyd Clark’s ‘Anzio.‘ I constantly renewed Redmond McLaughlin’s ‘The Royal Army Medical Corps,’ and tracked down the wonderful ‘RAMC’ by Anthony Cotterell (1943/4).  I also began to tackle the big beasts of military history like Max Hastings, James Holland and the sublime Antony Beevor. I had a voracious appetite for knowledge, most evident in my weekly interviews with Bill.

Bill was a perfect interviewee. He was bright, thoughtful, honest and generous. He forgave the technical problems with cameras or tape-recorders, and my inexperience. Each time I asked him to recount a particularly horrific event, he took a deep breath, squared his shoulders and answered. The same questions were repeated, not because I was voyeuristic, but because I was thoughtless. When I looked out onto the garden I saw the washing line. When Bill looked out, he saw the war.

One of the events which caused him great distress was the capture of his greatest friend, Frank Allen at Anzio.

He described, in detail, how the Black Cats had landed with the invasion force at Anzio on 22nd January 1944; how they had wasted time building up the bridgehead while the Germans brought in reinforcements and surrounded them; how attempts to breakout had ended in slaughter, and how Frank had been captured during a disasterous night mission.

It was an oft repeated story, but when I checked the records I discovered that the Black Cats arrived in Anzio on 17th February, weeks after the initial landings, and that Frank had been taken prisoner the previous November. Up until then, his accuracy had been astonishing but now I had to tell him that, in his distress, he had merged these two most traumatic events into one.  It’s hard to tell a proud and confident man that he’s been mistaken for over 50 years,  It took him a while for it to sink in.

Alongside the research, I was drafting and re-drafting the book. It hit 20 drafts, then 25 and finally 30, before I had set every event in context. It had been a hard graft but I felt confident enough to send it out to two of my most trusted writing buddies for their feedback.  Their response was unanimous; yes the book had more context, but its heart had been buried under a mountain of facts.  As I painfully digested their devastating comments, I realised that I had inadvertently created a second rate military history from a first rate personal story. Almost four years of research, effort and time had been wasted. I was shattered and exhausted. I wanted to slink into a corner, lick my wounds and chide myself for ever having thought I could write a book.