From the seriously fine opening to the tense unraveling and binding up, TWO STORM WOOD by Philip Gray is a thriller, a love story, and a history.
World War One is over. The parades have been run. But they turn the corner and the marching soldiers disappear. And that is why
…more Amy, a girl in love, needs to go to the place in France where her soldier lover fell. Amiens was the beginning of the end of the War for Britain but for Amy it is the beginning of a quest. Like Antigone she goes into the trenches, discovering more about war than she ever wanted to know. It is ugly and what is left behind is putrid and smelly. The terrain is. minutely described as well as what it contains. This is a book of many layers. What lies beneath is outlined by streams and sunlight, much like the map that Amy uses to get to the truth.
She meets up with volunteers who are finding bodies and identifying graves. This is set in 1919 but the truth of the matter is in the graves, excavated, dug and yet to be dug. "Grave Identifiers" still exist today in 2021. Bodies still need rest. (Rudyard Kipling's son fell in 1915 and was identified in 1992-see My Boy Jack.)
I thought I knew quite a lot about the Western Front but I was grateful for the computer because there were many times when I stopped to look up places, battalions and oh my goodness things I did not know and about which I intend to find out more. (The CLC needs to be unburied.) (less)
