Liverpool Kids of WWII - Part 1

The Liverpool Blitz is over…

The seven-year-old boy who was evacuated in The Green Gates Story, comes home after many months away, and is faced with changes to his life: house moves, new districts, new faces…

No sweets, because Mum’s used the coupons for sugar.
What are bananas?
What’s ice-cream?
White bread?

Upon his return to his home city and with his evacuation experience behind him, he views his life ahead as a series of hurdles, but the War is ongoing…

Toys? – Pretend games and a good healthy imagination.
Free-time? – Fun of collecting waste paper, scrap metal, bones and rags, in support of the war effort.

His first trip into town, shopping with Mum, and the surprising sight of big blackened shells, once shops, now dark spaces between buildings, which had suffered direct hits, torn apart innards and burnt deposits.  
Blast waves obliterating shop windows and doors of adjacent buildings, displaying:
Heaps of broken bricks
Shattered concrete supports
Splintered wood floors hanging drunkenly, with massive heaps of dust and debris deposited on the piled remains, awaiting attention and clearance.

How to cope with the unnecessary death of a classmate, killed at play, after accidentally falling through the blitzed roof of an unsafe bomb-damaged house?

When the supply and demands of shortages cause the theft of a family bicycle.

Kids discovering the incomprehensible: German POWs sitting smoking, chatting and laughing, employed in collecting and stacking usable bricks from a bomb site, watched by a grey-haired bespectacled British soldier sat in his parked army lorry when he was not reading a dog-eared copy of Lilliput magazine.  
Same kids, frowning and mindful of captured British soldiers packed into overcrowded huts inside barbed-wire enclosures, overlooked by machine-gun towers, in the Fatherland!

Liverpool Kids of WWII, Part 2

The boy was growing into youth – not yet a teenager – but was bright enough to know his country was in a war that it mustn’t lose, that his brother and uncles were also part of this deadly struggle…

Melodious harmonies and helmets were heard and seen at the impromptu Christmas party his mum and dad had arranged. He was as inquisitive as could be because it sounded like the Americans had arrived with Uncle Jim for the little house party he’d eavesdropped about over the last few days.

“Gosh a’mighty!” he heard one over-the-pond voice exclaim. “You got gas lighting but no electricity in the house, huh?”

The front room was alive with noise generated by adults, both seated and standing, in a happy conversation. Already, a smoky fuzz was forming from lit cigarettes, held firmly between thumbs and forefingers and used sometimes to emphasise a point or two in the friendly interchange of chit-chat.

The first thing he noticed was one policeman’s helmet and two American army white military police garrison caps grouped together at one end of his mum’s upright piano top. Railway policeman, Uncle Jim was in boisterous good humour with the two Americans.

Suddenly, his young eyes lit up as he spied a crumpled untidy mess of military equipment in the corner of the room, which drew him onto it immediately. He could see a US army belt with what looked like a brown wood baseball bat attached, as well as a set of handcuffs.

Stigmata of Auschwitz Part 2

The Stigmata of Auschwitz is the brief story of the life and love of Rebekah and Gabriel.

The two main characters of the story are a young Jewish couple whose lives bringing up their young child are cut short and sacrificed to an evil Nazi ideology.

The story takes place between March 1938 to September 1941, in the time of the Shoah (the Holocaust).

Gabriel is from Budapest in Hungary, where he is sent on a mission to Munkács in Western Ukraine. There he meets Rebekah. They fall in love, marry, and settle in Munkács, where the population is 42% Jewish.

In Munkács, Gabriel and Rebekah build up a successful business and public life: he becomes a councillor representing the Jewish community, while she is a member of the Union of Jewish Women. To complete their enviable lifestyle, they have a much-loved baby son.

But their dream is destroyed by the antisemitism unleashed at the outbreak of the Second World War; their life together is ruined by the ruling fascist elite. Consequently, they departed to Auschwitz, where they are murdered.

However, their two-year-old son is rescued and raised by their neighbour.

Survival: A Story of Friendship

It is a true story based on 13 years of research: the story of friendship between a Jewish boy, Freddy and his Christian friend, Helmut (who are separated by the political turmoil of the aftermath of the First World War in Germany), who obliged Freddy and Freddy’s family to seek refuge in France. It is also the story of friendship between Freddy and George, Freddy’s classmate whom Freddy meets in school in Paris. Moreover, it is also the story of Sigmund, whose patriotic blindness impacted his and his family’s life; the story of Nellie, who left Germany for Colombia before Nellie’s parents sought refuge in France and whose mission would be to reunite the family in a peaceful and friendly country.

Furthermore, the novel also emphasises the emotional costs of the First World War and its indirect result on the onset of the Second World War.

Spitfire Spies

Summer 1940 - Great Britain is in grave peril. With the ‘phoney' war turning into a very real war on the ground and in the air, Hitler's troops storm across an unprepared Europe towards the English Channel. Invasion looms. But the British have a weapon in their arsenal that may be a game changer and bring victory against all odds: the mighty Spitfire.So severe is the threat posed by this remarkable fighter plane that Germany sends two operatives - one a reluctant Englishman, the other a loyal Nazi - on an audacious mission to infiltrate and destroy. Will they achieve their goal or can MI5, with the aid of double agents and a brilliant female pilot, turn the tide of espionage to their advantage? With a literary adroitness reminiscent of an aviator in battle, author John Hughes weaves a tale of intrigue, love and betrayal in a fast-paced thriller of a debut novel which wends its way from the Fatherland via the beaches of Dunkirk to the skies over Southern England.

Endless Mission III

This is a fictional plot, set in the period between the WWI and the WWII, as the third part to the espionage drama “Endless Mission” Trilogy.

Rebellion

Claudius’s invasion of Britannia was achieved almost unopposed. The few pockets of credible resistance were ruthlessly crushed by the machine that was the Roman army. What followed was a tense but relatively peaceful co-existence, even some merging of cultures.

That peaceful life was shattered by greed and oppression, when the new Emperor, Nero, forces a change in hierarchy in the province. Paulinus, a brutal Governor, and Catus, the mercilessly greedy Procurator, badly misjudged the mood of the Britons. A misjudgement that led to something that had never happened before: a uniting of the Britannic tribes. Theft of inheritance, a viciously humiliating beating of Queen Boudica, and the rape of her daughters sets in motion a rebellion that grows into an unstoppable, often uncontrollable army.

Weyland, a Briton and the son of a blacksmith, who as a boy was trained by a Roman soldier to fight as a Roman, becomes an unlikely player in Boudica’s plans to draw the Governor into fulfilling his pledge to eradicate the Druids. Now, with the majority of the Roman army in the west of the country, Boudica sets about gathering together an overwhelming horde, hell-bent on revenge for years of occupation. There can be only one outcome: victory or death.

The Cedars of Beckenham

The Mystery of an Antique German Doll reunites members of a family torn apart during The Third Reich of Nazi Germany.

This family saga, starting in the leafy suburb of Beckenham on the borders of Kent and London, begins in 1930 in the comfortable world of four British upper-middle class families blind to the impending changes that are about to threaten not only their world, but everyone else’s world, too.

A doll belonging to the Abuthnott family becomes the catalyst that brings about two sides of the Rubenstein family, who were able to escape from Germany in the late 1930s finding refuge in the United States of America and in the British Mandate of Palestine.

Along the way, the horrors of the Blitz and the British struggle for survival are enacted out against the parallel Germanic horror of holocaust separation. The survivors in the United States, Great Britain and Israel adapt to a new world as it unfolds through the second half of the 20th century, until by the chance sale of a German Biedermeier doll at Sotheby’s in New York, their separate paths are brought together in 2017.

The four Beckenham families adapt to their changing lifestyles witnessing a rich tapestry of 20th century history taking the reader all over the world with its beauty, passion and prejudices.

The Unknown Warriors

The Unknown Warriors is based on a true story set in the beauty and tragedy of Europe in the years just before the Second World War. Abrienda de Soza, inheritor of a fortune stolen from the coffers of Imperial Russia during the last days of the Russian Civil War, fights to keep her country out of the hands of both Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia and preserve a culture threatened by both through any means possible. Nika Molnar, an agent working for Hungarian Intelligence’s Special Unit, seeks to exact vengeance on the man who murdered her father when she was a child. Impeccably researched, The Unknown Warriors captures the feel and nuance of a world soon to be destroyed forever—a uniquely told and deeply compelling story of war, intrigue and betrayal, but also of love and sacrifice played out against the backdrop of a world heading inexorably towards war.

The title is taken from a speech by Winston Churchill. “This is a War of Unknown Warriors, but let all strive without failing in faith or duty…”

Metamorphoses

“Returning to a rejuvenated South Australian infantry battalion, after having been severely injured at Gallipoli, newly promoted Sergeant Major William Berenger finds himself in the sleepy village of Albert on the Somme on the eve of a massive Australian assault at Pozières. Having married Juliana, whom Berenger had first met 15 years earlier as a Boer prisoner in the South African war, Berenger is called again to the colours, despite the impending birth of their first child.

A young British soldier, Private Reginald Atkins from the Ox and Bucks finds himself trapped in a shell hole in front of the Australian trenches. He is soon joined by an injured Australian, Private Lachlan Watts trying to make his way back to his battalion. Subsequently, both Watts and Atkins are tried for cowardice: the Australian soldier being found Not Guilty, whilst the British soldier is unjustly executed.

Whilst on a night reconnaissance mission in No Man’s Land, Berenger encounters a German soldier from the Bavarian 16th Reserve Infantry Regiment, whom he severely injures but does not kill. Removing this soldier’s identity tags, he discovers upon slithering back to Australian lines, the soldier’s identity as hitherto anonymous aspiring artist, Adolf Hitler.

Berenger discovers that the Germans have been attempting to tunnel under Albert in an attempt to blow-up the Australian lines. Pozières must be taken before the Germans thwart the Allies’ imminent assault.”

Francis Fletcher and the Knights of the Golden Gift

It is 1763, and the Seven Year’s War with France has just ended.

Captain Francis Fletcher and his loyal crew are wanted for piracy, and marooned on a mysterious unchartered island. Before being captured by the British navy, Fletcher unknowingly discovers something hidden on the island, which turns out to be secret biblical gold.

Fletcher is ordered to retrieve the gold in order to earn his pardon, but he must sail alongside his old friend-turned-foe, Captain Percy Talbot, who stole away from him his childhood sweetheart, Isabella Norris. Together they must sail through treacherous pirate infested waters while at the same time evading a secret society of assassins who are sworn to protect the secret of the gold’s whereabouts.

Not for the Telling

A minor road accident led to a chance meeting of two new undergraduates, whose origins, study paths, and potential employment proved to be so contrasting. War was out of the question at the time, but when it arrived it enabled both women to devote their interests to a common objective. One found her metier in the air. Though discouraged by the exclusion of women from flying in the air force, nevertheless she seized a golden opportunity to fly in the service of her country. Her wartime record was distinguished and record breaking. Meanwhile, the other was recruited into an anti-espionage service designed to curb the activities of those citizens who were bent on crippling the national effort, if and when war actually came. The ensuing wartime enabled both women to excel in their respective duties, one in the physical sense, the other surreptitiously. On leaving university their ways had taken them apart, through unexpected adventures, trials, tribulations and various love matches, but a second sheer chance in their lives brought them together again, after losing each other and forgetting their former friendship.