Getting back to History
I was about to start on the horse flesh idea I listed for a Writing Magazine competition and thinking of where the story starts, which is not always at the beginning but where the dramatic question is postulated. For a short story of 1500 words it would need to be close to the time the soldiers were ‘going over the top’. That would have the cook thinking he had at least given them a good meal and go into backstory to set up the sadness when only half came back. There were other possibilities but, as I turned them over, I realised there was a lot more in the story and to build the characters properly it would need more than 1500 words. I’d want the colonel to come and, like Forester’s General, stir things up. The increased activity would get people killed and the men against him. He might even get one or two shot for cowardice. There is the cook’s reaction to trench food and his decision to join the catering corps. The General would have to replace all the old lieutenants, reluctant to risk the lives of men they had been with for months, with new ones who were gung ho and wanting to make a name. There is the sergeants’ reaction and so much more to explore that it would take maybe 40,000 words or more to do the thing justice. With that, the story has gone on the back burner with several other ideas. In actual fact, I’m not keen on writing about the trenches and much prefer the German South West Africa (now Namibia) and German East Africa (Tanzania) campaigns (starting in King or Kaiser and Shadows in the Veldt) with the movement that allowed characters to develop. I need to finish the 1820 story but then I am going back to following Koos, the chap of mixed race man mistaken for white by the recruiting office, in Military Intelligence
Extra helping of food for thought.