From Winnipeg, Joan and I drove through more wonderful flat,
and I mean flat, golden fields for a hundred miles.
We got out of our car to savour the vastness of the prairie
as we headed for Shilo...
...to meet Major (Ret’d) Marc George...
...the head of the Royal Regiment of Canadian Artillery Museum, the largest
artillery museum in North America. Marc worked with me on the
Alford Saga’s Book Six, The Gunner, all one summer. He was afterwards
the advisor on the film Passchendaele.
He and his pretty wife Caryl live in nearby Brandon.
Caryl in her garden.
My father, Lieut. The Rev Eric Almond, served in a howitzer brigade.
This alternately horrifying and exciting story follows my father as he fought
through Vimy Ridge (above is a painting of this battle by Richard Jack
in the Canadian War Museum in Ottawa), Passchaendale, Ypres, every major
battle of the war. I use the Battalion diaries as a basis, though
the actual scenes might be called fiction.
At the RCA Museum in Shilo, every heavy artillery piece has been
carefully restored and preserved.
They even have an original printing plate of Lieut. Colonel
John McCrae's poem In Flanders Fields...
Here's an inscription of the complete poem in a bronze "book" at the
John McCrae memorial at his birth place in Guelph, Ontario, Canada.
Col. McRae with his dog. He was a surgeon,
but preferred to join up as a fighter.
Paul and Marc, stand beside the 4.5" gun with which, for several agonising
years, Paul's father Eric fought — resulting in severe shell-shock lasting
all his life. Marc holds a 4.5" howitzer projectile; Paul, a captured German
cartridge engraved by the 35th Battery with their battles and gun positions.
The gun required six horses to pull, and five men to fire.
Book 5 of The Alford Saga is set in the Boer War. Paul stands with a
12-pounder beside the Boer War mannequin in the pith helmet.
Marc arranged for Paul to have an article in the venerable Brandon Sun,
and to appear on radio, and in the forces magazine, Stag.
'Alford Family' author grateful for input from
Shilo museum director
by Ian Hitchen, 24/09/2011
Award-winning filmmaker turned bestselling author Paul Almond is asked the title of his book. It’s not named yet, and Almond — as he often did while writing the novel — turns to RCA Museum director Marc George for some help.
“What do you call an artilleryman, do you call it that?” Almond asks George.
“The gunner,” George replies.
“Oh, the gunner? That’s cool,” Almond says as he grabs a pen, borrows a scrap of paper and scrawls down “The Gunner” as the possible title.
“Oh, that’s great! Yes sir, that’s a great title,” Almond says.
This exchange is the kind of collaboration which enabled Almond to write the sixth book of “The Alford Family Saga” in the first place.
The eight-book saga is a fictional account based on the history of Almond’s family between 1800 and 2000. As such, it describes 200 years of Canadian history through the eyes of a settler’s family on the Gaspe coast of Quebec.
The saga begins with Almond’s great-grandfather leaping from a British warship and his struggle to settle in the harsh Canadian wilderness. It then follows the family through such major historical events as the Boer War, the First World War, the Great Depression and the development of Canadian culture.
The first book, “The Deserter,” was released last fall and the second book, “The Survivor,” was released in the spring.
Almond, 80, was in Brandon this week as part of a national tour to promote the saga and got a chance to meet George for the first time in person after spending months corresponding by email.
They’d teamed up to research the sixth book, which is due to be released in 2013.
It follows the story of Almond’s father, who served in Europe with the 35th Howitzer Battery in the Canadian Field Artillery during the First World War.
Seeking historical accuracy as he wrote his account, Almond approached the military in search of an expert on howitzers and was directed to George at the RCA Museum at CFB Shilo. Their collaboration spanned six months in 2008.
“Marc helped me all the way through, we were on email every day for six months,” said Almond, a recipient of the Order of Canada and the Directors’ Guild of Canada’s Lifetime Achievement Award. “I could not have written the book without Marc.”
George provided details about how the First World War gun would have been fired, and detail for scene-setters — such as, who would have stood where during parade and what the soldiers would have heard.
George said the research he did with the help of museum staff expanded his own knowledge about the First World War.
“It’s really fun because I learned a lot as well,” George said. “I certainly don’t know everything about the artillery. I have to look up a lot of this stuff as well.”
George said Almond’s novel brings life to First World War history, and he believes it’s an engaging way for Canadians to learn about the soldiers and their experience.
“I’m sure, in my heart of hearts, that a gunner from the First World War sitting here, if he’d read the book, he would nod and smile and say yes, that’s pretty close to what it was like,” George said.
Republished from the Brandon Sun print edition September 24, 2011
