Writers Review: Special feature: Q&A with Sue Purkiss about her first novel for adults, AN ORDINARY WAR

"I realised in the end that the Dad I knew wasn’t the young man who’d been through the war. Harry isn’t Dad, though they shared some of the same experiences ... "

Sue Purkiss has enjoyed parallel careers in teaching and writing. Starting as an English teacher in secondary schools, she went on to work with children who were out of school for medical reasons, and with young offenders. She also spent five years working as a Royal Literary Fund Fellow at Bristol and Exeter Universities, and has taught creative writing in the community for more than twelve years.

Her books until now have been for children. They include historical fiction (Jack Fortune, Warrior King and Emily’s Surprising Voyage, which was long-listed for the Carnegie), and a contemporary novel, The Willow Man, as well as several retellings and a life of Shakespeare. An Ordinary War is her first novel for adults.

Sue lives in Somerset, whose magical landscapes provide the settings and inspiration for several of her stories.

Sue answers questions from Linda Newbery.

- Linda: First, congratulations on publishing your first novel for adults, and we’re delighted that its home is with Writers Review Publishing! An Ordinary War is partly based on your father’s experiences as a prisoner-of-war. Did he talk about this, or was he – like Harry – silent on the subject?

Sue: Thank you, and I’m very happy to be part of Writers’ Review Publishing!

Dad only started to talk about his experiences late in life – and then, it was mostly about the funny bits (many of which have made their way into the book). There were some things that he remembered with fondness: he enjoyed working in forestry, and he often spoke with relish of the pea and ham soup which was made by the farmer’s wife on one of the work camps he was on. He only rarely referred to the darker bits: I do remember him saying once that no-one knows what they’re capable of until they’ve been really hungry. (When he came home in 1945, he weighed, I think, about six and a half stone.) He also talked about how he was captured on the way to Dunkirk.

- Linda: Did he keep a journal, as Harry does in the story, and if so when did you first become aware of it?

Sue: He did keep a journal, but sadly, it didn’t make it home with him. On that long march across the north of Germany in the bitterly cold winter of 1945 – which is described in the book – he sold it to a Russian, who wanted the paper for cigarettes. The Russian gave him a loaf of bread for it. Such a shame! I do have some documents, but they are mostly letters written to him by his mother and sisters before they knew he had been captured – the army returned the letters to the family, which is why I have them. One, from his mother, is particularly poignant: she’s obviously very anxious because she hasn’t heard from him, and begs him to find a minute to drop her a line.

- Linda Which parts of the story are based directly on what happened to him?

Sue: Harry and Dad both come from a working-class background in Ilkeston, Derbyshire, and they share the same family – a mother and five sisters: Dad’s father died when he was fourteen. The route of his journey into and out of captivity is the same. Art, Harry’s friend, is very loosely based on Shep, whom he met when they were both POWs, and with whom he stayed in touch for the rest of his life. I met Shep: a lovely, gentle person. Zofi and most of the other POWs are completely made up: Eamon has some of the characteristics of someone I met once or twice at university and for some reason always remembered – but he was one of those characters who really took on a life of his own. I’m very fond of Eamon, rascal as he is! RSM Lord was a real person, and was at the camp at Fallingbostel: I remember Dad talking about him.

- Linda: What kind of research did you do for the story? I know that you’ve visited several of the places, which must have been very moving.

Sue: After Dad died, in 2004, I decided to try and find out more about his wartime experiences. I knew that there were very large gaps in my knowledge of what had happened to him. I started off with the Imperial War Museum, and they were very helpful. They recommended some books – one by someone who must also have been taken prisoner at or on the way to Dunkirk, and was in the same prison camps in Poland as he was. That was very useful – I’ve credited it and the other main ones I used at the end of the book.

They also told me that returning prisoners of war were supposed to fill in a form outlining their experiences, and that all of these are kept at the National Archives in Kew. So that was my next trip.

And it was unexpectedly moving. When I put in my request, the archivist warned me that though everyone was supposed to fill in one of these forms, not everyone did: it was possible that Dad’s form wouldn’t be there. Knowing Dad’s approach to form-filling (one, unfortunately, which he passed on to me), I resigned myself to the likelihood that he would somehow have managed to avoid it, and I leafed through the thick file without any real expectation of finding his form.

But it was there. And what I hadn’t anticipated was that it would have been in his own, very distinctive handwriting: he enjoyed writing letters, and I’d had so many of them over the years that his writing was instantly recognisable. As I looked at it, I had, as they say, a moment.

This form told me exactly which camps he had been in – all of them in Poland except for the last one. It told me of his escape attempts and punishments: there was a question as to whether he’d been badly treated, but he brusquely shrugged this one off, and I could tell that by this stage he was getting impatient and wanted to be off.

Some time after this I visited the site of one of the camps, Torun, in Poland, known during the war as Thorn. In this I was extremely fortunate to have the help of my son’s Polish partner, Joanna – I couldn’t have done it without her.

- Linda:What were you reading before or during the writing?

Sue: I read all the books I could find about how prisoners of war were treated by the Germans – there’s a list in the book. They were amazing books – so carefully researched, but so readable. There’s also an online BBC archive called The People’s War, which gathered together people’s experiences of the war, and is still available. That was both useful and fascinating.

- Linda: Which were the hardest parts to write?

Sue: It wasn’t hard to write, though I kept changing my mind as to how to begin and end it.

What was hard was that I’d wanted in the beginning to get across Dad’s character, and the way he viewed his experiences. He didn’t feel any animosity towards the Germans – he always said there were good and bad people, same as you’d find anywhere. But he did draw a sharp distinction between the Gestapo and the Wehrmacht.

But I realised in the end that the Dad I knew wasn’t the young man who’d been through the war. Harry isn’t Dad, though they shared some of the same experiences.

- Linda: Is this something you’ve felt compelled to write for some time?

Sue: Yes, I did feel compelled to write it. It seemed to me that the only stories I’d read about the experience of being a POW in Germany/Poland were set in officers’ camps and they were different in several significant ways: in particular, officers weren’t obliged to go out on work camps – so presumably they had more time to concoct ingenious escape plans. And I always felt a bit short-changed, on occasions when the rescue from Dunkirk was – absolutely rightly – celebrated: but with only a rare mention of the 30,000 or so who were not rescued, and who therefore spent five years of their young lives in captivity. I wanted to redress that a little bit.

- Linda: You’ve written mainly for children till now, although I know you’ve had some success with short stories for adults, in competitions. Do you think you’ll continue writing for adults?

Sue: Yes, I think so. But who knows? Sometimes an idea beckons, and you follow…

- Linda:What are you working on now?

Sue: I’m working on short stories – many of them arising from the lives of artists, or from their paintings.

Linda: Thank you - and I know An Ordinary War will be enjoyed by its readers!

An Ordinary War is the sixth title from Writers Review Publishing.

The other titles are:

The Poet's Wife by Judith Allnatt