| | Alan O'Reilly's book is about a World War Two soldier from Staffordshire whose religious beliefs are tested in battle.
Alan, a devout Christian himself, tells us how he came to write the story...
I came to England from Australia in 1978 to work for ICI on Teesside. Two years later, I got married and still live in this country, in spite of the winters!
Soon after my arrival, I visited Staffordshire; and have vivid memories of Cannock Chase and the Roaches.
They struck me as areas of outstanding natural beauty and when, after a visit to the WW2 battlefield areas of Arnhem in Holland, I decided to write a fact-based novel about wartime, it seemed right to include those areas in the book.
I reckoned that the main male character should be an athletic type who regularly ran the Roaches and subsequently trains on the Chase as an infantryman.
 | The sheer panic, fear and terror of war |
Christian soldier
My character later transfers to the Parachute Regiment and sees action in North Africa, Sicily and at Arnhem during the 'Market Garden' operation, where he must reconcile his Christian beliefs with the hideous principle of 'killed or be killed' in desperate, close quarter fighting.
That reconciliation is achieved largely through the knowledge that his comrades-in-arms depend on him, as he does on them, for sheer survival.
At times, that most basic of instincts can eclipse the strongest faith and lay bare our raw humanity.
'Sound of Battle...'
The title Sound of Battle is drawn from the Bible text, Jeremiah 50:22: "A sound of battle is in the land, and of great destruction"
Jeremiah alludes to what is often the ordinary soldier's most distressing experience and indeed one of the cruellest of weapons used against him, the very sound of modern warfare, from shattering bombardments and the savage clatter of Spandau fire to the pitiful cries of friends wounded, dying or unhinged.
The book does have its gentler side, in the form of the main female character who becomes a Queen Alexandra's army nursing Sister but she too must strive to keep trusting in God's mercy when confronted with shockingly wounded men from the battlefront.
Not an easy task, especially when one's fiancé is posted Missing In Action.
Staffordshire memories
The late Mr George Leigh, formerly of Stafford, who served with the 2nd Battalion, the Parachute Regiment, provided me with invaluable first-hand material for the campaigns in North Africa and Sicily.
For recollections of the 'Market Garden' operation, I was extremely fortunate during my Arnhem tour to meet a Mr Bill Croft, long-time resident of Tean (near Cheadle in North Staffordshire) who served with the 2nd Battalion the Grenadier Guards, all the way from Normandy to Germany itself.
When Bill's battalion arrived at Sandbostel Concentration Camp in about May 1945, he recalled that the first thing he saw was "a long grey mound, like the ash heaps back home."
It turned out to be a pile of decomposing bodies.
Bill passed away last December, aged 91.
A lasting tribute
Sadly, the WW2 generation is passing from the scene and I like to think that 'Sound of Battle' will help to commemorate the efforts of Bill, George and others like them, to whom we will always be indebted |
