Poetry – Bloom by James Kemp

Bloom

“Splash!”

A roar over my head closes
from behind and drowns the radio.
Binoculars brought to bear, I observe
the seed embedding. It grows
a small orange blossom. Morphing
into a larger, darker flower
climbing from the point of impact.

Rain patters over the iron roof
as sods and stones strike sonorously.

The flower is gone, dissipated
in a cloud of dust, and silence
returns.

Notes

This was the first full poem that I wrote, and this is the fourth draft, which may not be the final version. It was prompted from the memory of watching artillery shells burst when training as an artillery forward observer at Warcop training area in Cumbria in 1991. On the FOO course I gave an incorrect map reference and the first ranging shell burst about 150m in front of me (the wartime safety distance is 250m, in peacetime double that). Normally you don’t see the orange flame of a bursting shell, I only saw it for an instant, and that most likely because of how close I was to the impact point. By chance the shell landed right in the centre of the field of vision of my binoculars. Needless to say this event was accompanied by copious swearing as I ducked back down inside the trench. That was followed by “Add one thousand, repeat.”

As part of my drafting process I read out the poem on video camera, so you can watch/listen to it as well as read it.

<iframe src=”//www.youtube.com/embed/1hsOw80cs-U” height=”315″ width=”560″ allowfullscreen=”” frameborder=”0″>

Enhanced by Zemanta

Book Review – Flames in the Field by Rita Kramer

Flames in the Field: Story of Four SOE Agents in Occupied FranceFlames in the Field: Story of Four SOE Agents in Occupied France by Rita Kramer

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

While this has lots of fascinating information about SOE Operations in France in WW2 it needs a better editor. The nature of the story, primarily of the secret operations in German occupied France in 1943 and the SD penetration of the SOE network, is one of many parallel threads and the uncovering of a mystery. So this makes it hard to just write a linear narrative, and the author has done a pretty good job of writing very readable prose that clearly explains what is going on. However there are a few places where the ordering of the material goes backwards within a few paragraphs and crucial pieces of information are given out of order.

The book shows an awful lot of research was done by the author, over a period of what seems to be years, and building on the work done by a number of predecessors. There is an academic level of referencing and footnotes.  There are several distinct parts to the book. The first is a narrative on four women SOE agents killed by the nazis at Natzweiler, which then widens to encompass the others that were arrested around the same time and that shared their captivity in Fresnes and then Karlsruhe. Each of these women is identified and has their life story before joining SOE told. Where it is known this then leads up to how they were captured.

Another piece of the narrative are the attempts by others (initally Vera Atkins in 1945-6 and then Jean Overton Fuller) to find out what happened to the women after they were arrested. This then leads nicely into attempts to work out whether or not the women were betrayed, and if so by whom. There has been a lot of controversy about this, and many of the participants in the events have competing theories. Traitors in SOE, strategic deception and sacrifice by the British, french informers, poor operational security of the SOE agents, German counter-intelligence competence. Each of these is disected in turn, sometimes adding new perspectives to help rule them in/out.

Lastly there is some discussion of the post-war discoveries as the secrets kept for 20-30 years following the war started to come out. How the revelations around both Ultra intelligence and the British strategic deception plans changed how the events of 1943 are interpreted to modern eyes.

On a content basis this should be a five star book, it draws together all the earlier sources and is well written. However the structure lets it down, and makes it harder to assimilate. It reads like the collected notes of the author more than as a structured narrative.

View all my reviews

Enhanced by Zemanta