A Troubled Peace by L. M. Elliott

A Troubled Peace is the sequel to Under A War Torn Sky and tells what happens to Henry Forester when he returns to the United States after serving as pilot, being shot down, travelling through war torn Europe with the help of the French resistance, being captured and tortured by the Gestapo, and escaping in an attempt to return to America.

Henry is back home in Tidewater, Virginia and all is not well. He is struggling with nightmares, flashbacks, restlessness and insomnia. He is often angry and does strange things. Anything can trigger a flashback that leads to him doing something strange. A shot by his father Clayton at a fox triggers Henry into believing he is being hunted by the Gestapo, resulting in him running for miles across the county.
"He wanted the war in his soul to be over. He was home. Why couldn't he get back to normal? And why wouldn't Patsy marry him?" Henry had  planned a perfect proposal, dancing at the tony John Marshall Hotel in Richmond. However, Patsy turned him down telling Henry that he seems angry and scares her.

Henry worries about the fate of those who saved  him and relives events to save those who died along the way. "Henry was not quite twenty and already he carried an old man's worth of regret and mourning." All of this causes Henry to get up every night and walk the lane of the farm so his nightmares won't distress his mother. Everything comes to a crisis one night while Henry is out for a walk with his dog Speed and thinking about the blind loyalty of German troops and the stubbornness of the Nazis as they fight a hopeless battle against the Allies. Remembering his own experiences and how the Allies are now "responding to Hitler's unyielding stance with their own brutality, desperate to hasten the war's end." only increases Henry's internal conflict. Although he starts out walking and whistling a tune, soon Henry is running fast. Unable to outrun his memories he decides flying might help him distance himself from those memories and bring him closer to God.

This leads Henry to steal Old Man Newcomb's Curtiss Jenny, an open-cockpit, World War I biplane. "In Newcomb's Jenny, he'd leave his nightmares in the dust...No bombs, no flak, no fighters, no worries."  In the air, "Henry's soul rang with a long-forgotten joy." Henry, mesmerized by the stars and the Milky Way attempts to take the little Jenny higher and higher until suddenly the engine stalls out. The plane begins plummeting to earth with Henry not reacting to the danger. At the last minute, believing he hears Dan's voice telling him to pull up, Henry manages to save himself, and land the plane, but unable to stop it crashes into the trees. Henry is knocked out, Newcomb's plane is badly damaged. His father, Clayton, not understanding what is happening is furious.

Henry finally admits to his mother and father and Patsy that he "can't forget France. My friends who died. All those missions where I rained death on people, on civilian. All the people who helped me and may have been tortured and killed because of it...because of me. And that little boy Ma. Pierre. I keep worrying about where he is. If anyone is helping him." Although he tries to explain what happened with the plane, Henry knows his father doesn't understand. Nevertheless he accepts that what he did was wrong and the fact that he must pay for the damage done to Newcomb's plane.

However, Henry's mother Lilly understands and advises him that sometimes healing is brought about by helping others. She tells him, "But I don't think you'll rest easy until you know about that little boy. Maybe...maybe you need to go back to France and find Pierre?"

After three weeks at sea, Henry disembarks in Marseille, France. It was Patsy who discovered a way over to Europe for Henry after he was unable to return to the Air Force due to being too thin and too battle fatigued. The newly organized United Nations was providing relief in the form of food, clothing, medicine and livestock to Europe. Henry became a "sea cowboy" shoveling manure, feeding and watering livestock and helping to birth foals on a merchant boat bringing over livestock to Europe. The livestock boat docks in Trieste, Italy but without the proper papers to enter the country, Henry decides to jump ship and gets hired onto a boat sailing to Marseille. Now in France with cartons of cigarettes , tins of Spam and some cash, Henry sets out on a journey to find Pierre and in so doing, find himself.


Discussion

A Troubled Peace is another finely crafted work of historical fiction by L.M. Elliott that provides readers with considerable insight into life in Europe - specifically France, during the post liberation period of 1944-45 and just prior to the end of World War II. Where A Troubled Peace excels is in portraying the effects of war both on a personal level and a national scope.

The tragic effects of war on individuals are ably demonstrated through the characters of Henry, Pierre, Claudette and Madame Gaulloise. For those who fought, it is best shown through the character of Henry Forester who returns to America suffering from post traumatic stress disorder, although during the 1940's this was largely unrecognized. Recently returned to the States, Henry is unable to settle back into farm life. His traumatic experiences from the war have left him a completely changed man. At first Henry doesn't realize what is happening to him and he attempts to pick up where he left off before enlisting by asking Patsy to marry him. Henry believes that "marrying Patsy was the way back, back to the life he'd planned before the war, before the missions, before all the killing." But Patsy tells him, "You seem so angry...so haunted. I worry that you think getting married will stop all that somehow. But what if I'm not enough? I don't think I can fix all that. It scares me Henry...You scare me."

Henry describes how he feels. "Was he haunted? For sure. Every day in his mind, he walked the hills and streets of France, imagining the fate of those who'd saved him. He reflew his last bombing raid so that Captain Dan lived. He reclimbed they Pyrenees to save his friend, Billy." Henry doesn't know how to come down from constantly being on alert. "He had entrusted his life to strangers he couldn't understand, and lived off of adrenaline and suspicion, scrounging for food, scrounging for safety, rarely finding either, day after day, week after week, for months. He couldn't figure out how to shed that kind of battle-ready wariness, that kind of split-second instinct to fight, to run. Half the time, he felt like a lunatic race-horse in a start box. Nobody had said anything in debriefing about how to shrug that off."

In an attempt to flee his memories and find some peace Henry steals a neighbour's plane. "This night was about freedom. This night was about baptism -- washing himself clean of death and regrets and disappointment and fear, the beginning life reborn, redefined." But the accident with the plane merely reinforces that something is terribly wrong. In an attempt to heal, Henry returns to France to try to locate Pierre who saved his life.

Henry's journey through France does eventually help him to begin to heal and to provide the closure he needs.  He finds Madame Gaulloise who saved Henry and many other downed pilots from certain death, he reunites with Claudette whom Henry saved from certain capture. He eventually does find Pierre and learns of the shocking fate of the people of Vercors. 

As Henry searches throughout France for Pierre, he inadvertently finds himself in Annecy, the home of Madame Gaulloise. Arriving at her house Henry is at first thrilled that she might be alive and then shocked at her condition. "The invalid, the living scarecrow, was Madame Gaulloise...Henry could see that all that was left of her dark, glossy hair were little tuffs. Sores scarred her temples." Madame Gaulloise's condition is so tenuous after months of starvation that she can eat little food and she is dying of tuberculosis. Only a day after arriving, Madame passes away.

From Madame Gaulloise, Henry learns that she survived by building "a safe fortress with my memories, an inner peace that came from knowing that I had done what had to be done." She advises Henry to read Albert Camus, a French philosopher, who "wrote that man's grandeur lies in his decision to rise above his condition. There is no fate that cannot be surmounted with scorn."  She tells Henry that "The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man's heart."

It is in the village of Vercors that Henry sees the devastating effect war has on the French people. In Vercors, France, the home of little Pierre and his mother, Henry is shocked by the devastation of a once vibrant country village.
"Beneath him should have been a lush green cup of fields and farms, wildflowers and sleepy cattle, ruled in the center by a little village of creamy houses with cherry pink-tiled roofs that were nestled around a church --its bell ringing out the hour, clear and sweet, rejoicing in another day.
Instead there was silence. A wide field of white crosses...
And where the village should have been --alive with roosters crowing, children yawning over cups of frothy warm milk, mothers humming as they poached eggs -- was rubble...
Henry could imagine the cries, the pleas, the refusals, the machine-gun fire, flames catching hold of timber, houses collapsing."

Henry learns the villagers of Vercors were encouraged to rise up against the Nazi's with promise of reinforcements, only to be left to face them alone. The Germans dropped incendiary bombs on the towns in retaliation, and landed SS troops with orders to exterminate everyone. French paratroopers, waiting in Sicily were never deployed, the people of Vercors sacrificed in a political move by de Gaulle.

While helping at the Lutetia's deportation center Henry begins to heal. "Seeing other people fight to survive, to walk away from the agonies they'd endured, was definitely prodding him to do likewise. " But it is when Henry spends time with Claudette, the woman he talked out of a killing rage, that he finally understands what Madame Gaulloise was attempting to tell him. Claudette explains to him what Camus meant in his short work, Le Mythe de Sisyphe. Sisyphe was a king, condemned to roll a boulder to the top of a hill every day only to see it roll back down. Sisyphe's life should have had no meaning but instead, it is his struggle that gives meaning to his life. This, Claudette tells Henry, is what he must find for himself again and the struggle to do so will help heal him. Henry comes to realize that taking Pierre back to America and helping him rebuild his life will give him a purpose. It is a beginning and one that was suggested by his mother Lilly, months ago. For Claudette, her purpose will be to rebuild her country into something better than what it was - country where women are treated as equals and where there are jobs.

Henry discovers that Pierre Dubois is now an orphan, his mother shot as she attempted to escape Ravensbruck. Pierre, like many abandoned children in Paris, searches the train station for his mother, while living in a cardboard box beneath a bridge near Notre Dame. These are just a few of the examples that portray how the war affected individuals.

Elliot also presents readers with a solid picture of what Paris and France was like in the aftermath of the war. Although liberation has brought relief from the oppression of the Nazi's, France is socially and economically devastated. According to Elliott in her Author's Note at the back, "France was the largest supplier of manpower and finished goods to Hitler's Germany. To win the war, the Allies had to destroy its production of ball bearings, tires and other such items used for Nazi tanks, planes, and ships." This meant bombing factories, supply depots and railways. Bombing these targets often meant significant collateral damage to civilians and left much of France in ruins. Elliot portrays the ruin of France both socially and economically; black marketers who ship meat and cheese in suitcases, empty stores, starving and orphaned children who search for parents at the train stations or at hotels, train stations filled with family and friends waiting for "absents" - that is people deported to concentration camps - to return.

Few novels deal with the immediate post-war period and Elliott's descriptions of the crowds in Paris waiting at the train station for the absents are deeply moving. "But when people recognized a ghostly figure, they burst through the crowd with both cries of joy and horror, gathering their loved one up in kiss-filled embraces. Others rushed forward and then stood woodenly, shocked, bewildered, repulsed."

Elliott also touches on the tenuous political situation in post-war France. The resistance contains many communist sympathizers and the United States government, which worked with Stalin to bring down the Nazis, is now concerned that France will fall under the influence of the Soviets. The author uses Henry's arrest by French police as a suspected black marketer, to portray the work of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) in attempting to identify communists and even working with Nazi SS officers to do so.

Henry believes that with the war now won, and peace declared, life will go back to normal. But George Orwell tells him, "The aftermath of war is a messy, brutal elbowing among political ideologies, as different groups that survived the war battle each other for power. They will smile at one another's faces while plotting coups and spying on each other...Peace? Peace is not that easy, that finite, my boy. War ends; then it takes along time to negotiate a real truce. Many times that peace is troubled and contains the embers for the next war, smoldering, just in need of a spark..."

The title of the novel is a direct reference to Orwell's comment to Henry. It is a reference to both the struggle for peace on a personal level as Henry is experiencing and on a national and social level as France and the rest of Europe will be experiencing post war.

A Troubled Peace offers so many themes to explore: forgiveness, the concept of peace, identity, and the struggle to find meaning in life. It is a novel with richly crafted characters, realistic descriptions of settings and events and superb incorporating of historical details that make the immediate post war era come alive.

Book Details:

A Troubled Peace by L.M. Elliott
New York: Katherine Tegen Books    2009
289 pp.

Suspect Red by L. M. Elliot

Set in Washington, D.C. during the Cold War, Suspect Red captures the paranoia and fear as politicans and the FBI are determined to hunt down potential Communists and subversives.

Fourteen-year-old Richard Bradley lives in a suburb of Washington with his nine-year-old sister Virginia (Ginny), his mother Abigail, and his father Don who is an FBI agent. Richard's father is a World War II veteran who served in the Air Corps as a rear gunner. Years later, he's still nervous around loud sounds and has trouble controlling his anger.

Richard will be starting high school and like any teen he's interested in reading books such as Robin Hood. However, everything and anything that even hints of socialism is purged. And this includes Robin Hood. He manages to read other banned books like Dashiell Hammett's The Maltese Falcon and John Steinbecks Red Pony, both of which have authors who are considered "Red subversives".  Richard has also been reading Catcher in the Rye by Salinger, but it is hidden from his mother.

Their Washington neighbourhood has many important people including Vice-President Richard Nixon. Senator Lyndon B. Johnson and J. Edgar Hoover, head of the FBI. In August, 1953, a new family, the Whites move into their neighborhood.  Richard and his mother take a meatloaf over as they welcome the Whites who are from Czechoslovakia. Teresa White tells Richard and his mother that they were lucky to escape Prague before the arrival of the Nazis and only because she had the good luck to be married to a member of the American diplomatic corps. They fled to London where they experienced the terror of the Blitz and then after the war travelled to New York. Teresa invites Richard to go upstairs to meet  her son Vladimir. As he passes through the house Richard cannot help but notice the unusual artwork and the amazing collection of books; The Beautiful and the Damned by F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway, Animal Farm by George Orwell and many others. As it turns out, Vladimir shares Richard's love of reading. However, Vladimir is much more cosmopolitan that Richard, having travelled more and having an interest in jazz.

In September of 1953 Richard and Vladimir who attend Wilson High School, take the city bus together and also eat lunch together. Richard has spent time showing Vladimir the sights of Washington, their favourite being the Museum of Natural History. Vladimir continues to lend Richard books, many of which are banned and he introduces him to the world of jazz including Thelonius Monk, trumpeter Miles Davis and saxophonist Charlie Parker. Richard and his family attend McCarthy's wedding. The girl Richard's been crushing on since third grade, Dottie Anne Glover is also there but she's interested in Richard introducing her to his friend Vladimir. Angry at her father for not allowing her to join cheerleading, Dottie wants to go on a date with Vladimir who she believes is a "Red" as a way of revenge.

As his friendship with Vladimir continues to grow Richard's world is broadened by his experiences with the White family. He travels to New York where he is introduced to the artist and writer friends of Teresa - many of whom are considered questionable by McCarthy. Richard, although friends with Vladimir is also careful to note anything unusual. When Teresa is seen receiving a package from a strange man, Richard is both excited and worried. Based on the other things he's seen at the White home, he suspects Teresa might involved in something important and he decides to tell his father. But in doing so, Richard may be doing more harm than good, while betraying the only good friend he has.

Discussion

In Suspect Red, Elliot tackles the 1950's, a difficult era to portray in historical fiction. Veterans had returned home, hoping to settle down to a life of peace but the world was anything but peaceful. America and the communist Soviet Union had emerged from the war as the world's two new super powers. Their military might depended on developing more sophisticated atomic weapons. To that end, America found itself in an arms race with the Soviet Union each trying to build bigger and more powerful bombs.In 1949, the Soviet Union successfully detonated an atomic bomb. Meanwhile Communism was spreading across the globe. Countries occupied by the Soviets at the end of the war, such as Poland, the eastern part of Germany, Yugoslavia, Romania and Albania saw Communist puppet regimes set up against the will of the people. Communism was also spreading in Asia - China had overthrown the Imperial dynasty and became Communist in 1949. Korea was now embroiled in war with Communists from Korea and China fighting to overthrow the U.S. backed government there. As a result, Americans saw communism as a real threat to their country, the world and their way of life.

The fear of communism in America really began after the Russian revolution of 1917 and the end of World War I. The war brought about great changes in class and social order as well as many attempts to establish the rights of workers. The early 1920's saw strikes for better wages and working conditions. In the 1930's Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal policies which aimed to help the unemployed, youth, elderly and poor were seen as socialist leaning. The House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) was formed in 1938 to ferret out anyone suspected of subversive, communist actions.

In 1947, the Truman government sought to help foreign countries who fought communism through financial aid. Many companies, universities and institutions as well as local governments developed loyalty programs to ensure only loyal Americans were hired. It was at this time that many actors, directors and screenwriters were investigated and brought before HUAC. Soviet spies were discovered within the government and even a scientist from the Manhattan Project.  In 1950, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were arrested for selling American information on the atomic bomb to the Soviet Union. They were tried, convicted and executed in 1953.

Senator Joseph McCarthy

All of this helped set the stage for Senator Joseph McCarthy's crusade to root out any subversive, communist or anti-American activities. He was convinced that the U.S. State Department was rife with Communist sympathizers.  Academics, writers, actors, musicians and really anyone was at risk of being investigated. Once reported, they appeared before the committee where "evidence' was often flimsy at best and often rewritten to suit the charges. Often these people lost their jobs, and were black-listed, thus preventing them from being employed in their professions. Even Einstein, Oppenheimer, and Linus Pauling were investigated. People were careful who they associated with and which organizations they belonged to. People who had joined Communist organizations in their youth or who had been invited to attend Communist functions but who had no real affiliation were considered suspect. The fear of subversive Communist ideas led to widespread paranoia and the banning of books and types of art.

Elliot effectively captures the paranoia of the McCarthy era through the characters of Richard Bradley and his family. At the beginning of the novel, Richard is enjoying reading Robin Hood until his mother tells him he can't read it and takes it from him. She tells Richard that the local librarians have made a list of banned books and Robin Hood is on it. "Because Robin Hood takes from the rich to give to the poor...That's a Communist concept." 

Richard whose father is an FBI agent wants to believe his father is a great G-man (Government man) but he learns from his mother that his father botched a very important case - the Judith Coplon case. Coplon was suspected of spying for the Russians and was put under FBI surveillance. Richard's father was one of the FBI agents assigned to follow Coplon but lost her for twenty minutes when she was planning to meet her Russian contact. Coplon went free and the situation was an embarrassment for the FBI and Hoover. Now Richard is "searching for proof that Don really was as good a G-man as he'd always believed his dad to be."  This leads to Richard being on the look out for anything suspicious and that leads him to suspect his friend Vladimir's mother. Viewed through the lens of paranoia, the White family appears on the surface to Richard at least support subversive ideas.

Richard finds the White's have many books by authors he has never heard of like Truman Capote, Ezra Pound, D.H. Lawrence and T.S. Eliot. He finds a copy of Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison, a Black author who portrays white people as racist. Vladimir's older sister, Natalia explains to Richard that a children's book, the winner of the 1952 Caledcott Medal for illustration is considered subversive because of one of its illustrations. She explains to Richard that this notion is ridiculous and that the illustrator's previous book, The Two Reds, is considered suspicious simply because of its title.  At her Christmas party, Teresa White expresses her disappointment at the State Department's decision to recall an exhibit of important American artists such as Georgia |O'Keefe and Edward Hopper from Czechoslovakia because it might be helping promote Communism.

On a visit to New York City with Vladimir and his family, watches Teresa meet a strange man and receive an envelope from him. She also meets Arthur Miller, the author of the play The Crucible, a controversial play whose theme of the Salem witch trials is a metaphor for the McCarthy hearings.

In the White home, Richard finds Czech newspapers, a map of Prague marked with red circles and arrows, a Life magazine with a picture of the AP bureau chief in Prague, William Oatis who was accused by the Czech government of spying for the US defaced with horns.

All of these little discoveries lead Richard to believe that the Whites might be involved in something sinister, so he reports everything to his father. However this leaves Richard feeling unsettled and guilty. He attempts to rationalize what he's done by telling himself that he has to be loyal to his dad first over his friend Vladimir and that "...he hadn't said anything bad about Vladimir. He'd simply passed on some interesting things he'd observed about people in Brooklyn Heights and Teresa's oddball friends." When he discovers that the White's home is being bugged, Richard realizes this has gone much farther than he anticipated. "Richard swallowed hard, fighting off vomit. He was weirdly elated and riddled with a horrible sense of responsibility at the same time. He knew there was something suspect abotu Teresa. But he liked her. And what had he done potentially to Natalia? To the brother who loved her so much, his best friend?"

The reality of what he's done sinks in when Richard learns from Vladimir what his mother has been doing all along - attempting to save the life of a cousin who has been sentenced to twenty years prison in Czechoslovakia on the testimony of William Oatis. However, the truth is too late for Vladimir and his family. Mr. White is suspended from his State Department job, pending a Loyalty Review Board hearing. He is considered a security risk because of Teresa who is friends with radical writers and artists. Although his suspension and review ends up not being due to what Richard told his father and what his father reported, Richard still feels deeply guilty for betraying his friend and his family. "...it was Richard's fault, for misinterpreting things, for making assumptions based on the bombast of powerful guys like McCarthy, for spreading gossip. For--how had Natalia put it?-- for not thinking for himself." 

Although his actions almost destroy his friendship with Richard the two boys do reconcile. But Vladimir has some advice for Richard, "It doesn't matter if you're liberal or conservative, man, just make your own decisions about what you believe." Vladimir also gives Richard a pin from Natalia with the reminder "that Robin Hood was his own man, with his own beliefs..." It is the quintessential lesson all teens must learn as they come of age as adults.

Writing a story set in the early 1950's was no doubt very challenging. Although told in second person, this novel is difficult to read when Richard oddly refers to his parents by their first names. However, Elliot does a great job in aiding her readers understanding of the 1950's era by including a great deal of historical information from this decade at the beginning of each chapter. This includes information numerous photographs on various topics and events related to the 1950s, including Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, the Korea War, the Soviet Union's hydrogen bomb test, Lucille Ball, Edward R. Murrow, and the McCarthy hearings. These detailed clips help to set the story in Suspect Red within the broader context of the times. Elliot also includes a detailed Afterword and Bibliography.

Overall, Suspect Red is good novel that explores the early Cold War in a way that will be appealing to younger readers, while informing them on this fascinating time in America.

Image credit: https://www.biography.com/political-figures/joseph-mccarthy

Book Details:

Suspect Red by L.M. Elliot
New York: Disney Hyperion    2017
292 pp.

Under A War Torn Sky by L.M. Elliot

Henry Forester, just nineteen years old is a co-pilot of a Eighth Air Force bomber crew stationed in Britain. Today's mission will be Henry's fifteenth but he's nervous. Because the average number of missions pilots survive is fifteen. In order to complete a tour of duty, every airman must fly twenty-five missions.

Henry's pilot is Dan MacNamara, a twenty-five year old married father from Chicago. Today's mission will be his twenty-first and he needs only four more missions to complete his tour.

At the morning briefing at Group Ops, Henry and Dan along with Billy White another co-pilot and the other fliers learn that they will have a long flight across the English Channel to the Belgian coast, down to France, along the northern edge of Switzerland, to southern Germany where their target is a ball bearing factory. Ball bearings are essential to the German war machine.

Dan and Henry go through their preflight checklist for the B-24 Liberator named Out of the Blue, carrying five hundred pound bombs and almost three thousand gallons of fuel. Their plane forms part of a six plane squadron that is part of a four squadron diamond formation. They meet up with other bomb groups over Great Yarmouth on the coast and then continue to fly towards Europe.  As they approach the continent, they encounter flak from the anti-aircraft batteries that line the European coast and then the planes of the Luftwaffe, Focke-Wulf 190s.

Billy White's plane, Battling Queen is shot out of they sky and soon Dan and Henry find themselves under attack. They are forced to bail after their number three engine is destroyed. Henry saves Dan's life by pulling him out of the plane, only to watch in horror as Dan is killed by a Messerschmitt pilot who strafs him as he parachutes to the ground. Henry quickly finds himself under attack and although his parachute is ripped, he manages to survive the hard landing with an injured ankle.

Henry limps through snow and forest towards Neuf-Brisach when he encounters an older man riding a bicycle. His confusion leads to a comical attempt to speak French but this moves the man to decide to help him. He informs Henry that he is in the Alsace region, a French province which was annexed by Germany four years earlier. The man, a teacher before the war took all his pupils, takes Henry to the abandoned schoolhouse to hide him. He believes Henry's foot is broken and that he will need the care of a doctor in a hospital. Eventually arrangements are made to transport Henry to a hospital. With the help of another man, Henry is hidden in a long flat-bottomed boat, "heavily loaded with red and white cabbages." The plan is to travel down the Grand Canal d'Alsace to Basel, a city on the border with Switzerland. In Basel, the teacher has a cousin who has promised to help.

However, when they reach Basel, the boat is searched by Swiss soldiers who narrowly miss bayoneting Henry, hidden in a crawl space beneath the crates of cabbages. Unfortunately the teacher's cousin refuses to help them, so Henry, fortified with a swig of brandy and delirious from the pain and infection, is left by a church where he is discoverd by Red Cross nurses and taken to a hospital.

Henry wakes in hospital to find that his ankle has been drained of the infection and the bone set. After surgery, Special Assistant to the U.S. Ambassador, Samuel Watson meets with Henry to tell him that the neutrality of Switzerland's government cannot be ensured. Because Henry just showed up at the door of the hospital, he is not yet classified as a prisoner of war. This means he can wear civilian clothes during his transport to Adelboden, an internment camp for Americans and therefore may have a chance of slipping away. He can then attempt to cross through Switzerland and into France, making his way across the Pyrenees into Spain and then to Portugal where he can take a boat back to England. Henry agrees to this and so begins a remarkable and dangerous journey that will change Henry forever.

Discussion

Under A War Torn Sky is a thrilling, action-packed novel about an American pilot who is shot down over France in World War II and attempts to make his way through war-torn Europe and back to Britain. This novel by Laura Malone Elliot is an exemplary work of historical fiction that accurately presents the circumstances the French Resistance operated under and portrays what many Allied pilots endured after being shot down by the Nazis. Elliot based her novel on the experiences of her father, also a B-24 pilot who was shot down and survived behind German lines in France for several months.

The hero of the novel is Second Lieutenant Henry Wiley Forester, a mere 19 years old at the time he is shot out of the sky by a Messerschmitt. Henry agrees to a plan to make his way through war-torn Europe in an attempt to return to Britain to continue fighting. He agrees to try to escape for two reasons; to impress his harsh father Clayton who has a low opinion of Henry and also because he doesn't want to be considered a coward.  In this way Elliot sets up her main character as the archetypal hero who undertakes a journey that is both dangerous and life-changing.

Henry's physical journey is harsh enough, walking on a barely healed ankle, not knowing where his journey will take him next, enduring hunger and cold, shunted from one place to the next, at risk constantly of being captured and interrogated by the Germans. Along the way he is helped by the most unlikely of people, all doing their part to resist the Nazis. Henry travels from Alscae to Thun, Switzerland, to Montreux, onto Geneva to Annecy and then to Grenoble. He spends time with a family near Vassieux-en-Vercours where he befriends a young boy named Pierre. Henry is taken to a maquis camp in Col de la Bataille (the maquis were French resistance fighters living in the forests and mountains of France during WW II). Eventually Henry falls into the hands of the Nazis when he and a group of pilots are betrayed by a Basque member of the French resistance as they travel through the Pyrenees. Henry finds himself taken to Toulouse where he is tortured for information. While on his way to Lyon for further interrogation, he manages to escape. After spending some time with another maquis group, Henry is eventually recaptured by the retreating German army and but is set free by an elderly German soldier. He is able to make his way to the American troops and after a period of time returns to his beloved home in Virginia.

Throughout Henry's journey he also experiences an internal journey of self-discovery. When he is first downed in France, Henry often recalls the harsh words and actions of his father Clayton who was determined to make Henry into a tough man. Henry joined the Air Corps to prove himself to his father, "to seem worthy of his respect even if he couldn't win his father's love." But his father indicates to Henry that he considers his enlisting a waste. When he is shot down, Henry is determined to survive if only to prove to Clayton that he's strong enough to do so. Henry doesn't understand why his father has been so harsh and unforgiving.

Nevertheless it is often the words of Clayton that Henry has heard throughout his childhood which ultimately change Henry into a man of action. For example, when he's overcome by fear as he approaches the checkpoint in Grenoble, Henry remembers his father's words, "Don't be a coward boy. Only cowards hesitate."  and he races through the checkpoint as he's ordered to do.  Later on when he is attacked by a member of the Resistance to determine if he is English or German, Henry staggers to his feet, prepared to fight, urged on by the voice of his father who often beat him. "Get up, boy, or they'll kick you while you're down." And when he is being taken to Lyon to be tortured further in the hopes that he will betray Madame Gaullioux, it is Clayton's voice that urges him to act to save himself. "Grab the gun, boy!" and "Shoot him boy, shoot him."

By the end of his journey, Henry has now become a man of action. While helping the maquis, Henry saves the lives of several maquisards in a desperate moment. "Henry no longer needed his father's voice to prod him in life-and-death circumstances. He picked up the grenade. It was heavy, cold, scaly. It felt like a thing of death. Henry pulled the pin, stood up, and hurled it."

Through his experiences in war, Henry comes to understand why Clayton has been so harsh. Although his father's strength of will brought Henry's family through the Depression, Henry can see how it might be hard "to shed a tough attitude or a wary distrust of people once the bad times were over." However, Henry is determined that these terrible experiences will not harden him.  He comes to understand that Clayton's harshness towards him was a sign of his love for his son. "What am I going to do with you, boy? Love's got responsibilities. Things you gotta do even if you don't want to.That's the kind of love a real man is capable of."

Henry experiences intense internal conflict because he's been forced to do things that he considers wrong, such as stealing food and clothing and even murder. After murdering his German interrogator and his driver, Henry is filled with horror. Dropping bombs from a plane meant he never saw the people he killed. This is very different. "Henry reached into the stream to wash himself clean of blood. It was everywhere -- his hands, his hair, his clothes, his soul. How would he ever be clean of all that blood? He had killed two men -- not from the anonymity of the sky -- but face to face, with his own hands. Besides that, he'd wanted to kill them, was glad that he killed them so taht he could live. He'd had murder in his heart. He couldn't wash that out. Henry knew that he was changed forever, and not for the better." Henry can reconcile his killing the German soldier but not the chauffeur.

However, Henry uses this experience to save Claudette from a similar situation. Filled with grief, rage and hate over what has happened to her family and her country at the hands of the Nazis, Claudette is determined to murder a young sixteen year old collaborator. Henry intervenes, asking her to consider what she's doing. "Think of Andrea, Claudette. Don't dishonor him with this. He died for France's freedom, not for this. And if you kill her, you're as bad as the Nazis. The one thing I've learned from all this hate and death is that when the war is over, it has to be over. If it's not, we'll just have another bloodbath in a few years. Don't do this Claudette. You're better than the Nazis. I know you are."

Henry's ideas about war also undergo a transformation. When Henry embarks on his journey he has no idea what the war is like on the ground. He never sees the effects of the bombs on the civilian population. But he soon discovers that even bombing a munition plant can have unexpected victims such as little Pierre's father. Henry questions "the strategy of dropping bombs on a country they were trying to liberate" after he tells Pierre that he his a bomber pilot and Pierre is troubled. Henry wonders if his father has been killed by those bombs dropped on the munitions plants the French are forced to work in.

Henry also entered the war with a certain opinion of his role in it. "Henry and his pilot friends had always seen themselves as the saviors of France. He was ashamed of their arrogance." But his experiences with the Resistance make him realize that the people who are part of the French Resistance are the ones who are risking everything.

Under A War Torn Sky accurately portrays the face of the French Resistance from the wealthy widow, to the old school teacher and the teenage guide whose family had sent him to live with strangers and who loves Louis Armstrong. Elliot brilliantly captures the heroics of the French resistance as they fight the Nazis against great odds and often paying a terrible price for their actions. Madame "Gaulloise" a wealthy widow whose son was captured at the Aisne River when Hitler invaded, hides not only Henry but Jews in her rooms. She is eventually captured and taken to Lyon where Klaus Barbie is working to have her executed. Henry is taken in by Pierre's family in Vercors. He realizes that Pierre's mother is not "just a sympathetic mother, taking pity on a lost American boy. She was fighting the war as actively here as he had fought it from the skies. Only her battle seemed scarier, somehow. At least he had a crew with him. She did her part so alone. Secrecy was everything. And if she made a mistake, the price was her son. At least Henry had never had to worry about his actions endangering Ma or Patsy." Pierre's family is denounced and the Nazis murder Pierre's grandfather, arrest his mother who is interrogated and then sent to Ravensbruck. Pierre, alone now is sent to live with the monks. Claudette who helps Henry after he escapes from the Nazis is connected to a maquis group that includes her lover Andre. She sees him murdered when the group is attacked by the Germans.

The sacrifice all these people made on Henry's behalf is not lost on him nor is the terrible reality of war. "...Pierre and his mother, Madame, the teenage guide, the old school teacher -- their faces whirled through his head. He'd never known the potential finality of a good-bye before now. Even when he's held his trembling mother, as he left for England, Henry had been completely convinced that he'd be back, that they'd be eating many a Thanksgiving and Christmas dinner together talking about his adventures. These people - these people who'd risked their lives to save him - he'd never see them again. He felt it in his bones, like an awful ache."

As with the archetypal hero, Henry returns home, his coming unannounced, to the joy of those who wait for him. In Henry Forester, Elliot has crafted an honest, intelligent character whose war experiences do not harden him, but make him more compassionate and understanding. Henry is a realistic character for the time period, drawing strength from his memories of his beloved mother Lilly, hope for a future with the girl he loves - Patsy and his belief in God whom he prays to frequently.

Under A War Torn Sky is a must read for fans of historical fiction. A map of Henry's flight plan and of his journey through Europe would have greatly enhanced this novel. Elliot offers readers a significant and interesting Afterword in which she explains more about the French Resistance and how they were vitally important to the success of D-Day, when the Allied troops finally were able to land on the beaches of Normandy and begin the effort to free Europe.

Book Details:

Under A War Torn Sky by L.M. Elliot
New York: Hyperion Paperbacks for Children       2001
284 pp.