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- Excerpt: Stranger In My Heart by Mary Monro
Saturday 12 May 2018
Stranger in My Heart by Mary Monro
Release Date: June 2018
Publisher: Unbound
Publisher: Unbound
Genres: Memoir / Biography
·
Stranger In My
Heart (with foreword by HRH The Princess Royal) is about the search for
understanding oneself, answering the question “Who am I?” by seeking to
understand the currents that sweep down the generations, eddy through one’s own
persona and continue on – palpable but often unrecognised.
My father fought at
the Battle of Hong Kong in December 1941, was taken prisoner by the Japanese
and then escaped in February 1942, making his way across 1200 miles of
inhospitable country to reach China’s wartime capital at Chongqing. Seventy
years later I retraced his steps in an effort to understand a man who had died
when I was 18, leaving a lot of unanswered questions behind. My book is the
quest that I undertook to explore my father’s life, in the context of the
Pacific War and our relationship with China.
A picture of a man of the greatest generation slowly unfolds, a
leader, a 20th Century Great, but a distant father. As I delve
into his story and research the unfamiliar territory of China in the Second
World War, the mission to get to know the stranger I called ‘Dad’ resolves into
a mission to understand how my own character was formed. As I travel across
China, the traits I received from my father gradually emerge from their
camouflage. The strands of the story are woven together in a flowing triple
helix, with biography, travelogue and memoir punctuated with musings on context
and meaning.
"A well-written and deeply satisfying book, packed with
information and adventure, as Mary Monro struggles to understand her WWII hero
father, her inheritance, and herself. Above all, a damn good read!”
Damien Lewis, best selling author of “Hunting the Nazi Bomb”
Damien Lewis, best selling author of “Hunting the Nazi Bomb”
EXCERPT
The author’s father contemplates escape from PoW camp in Hong
Kong in January 1942:
“The poor fate of the prisoners was clear to Dad as the
Japanese established their regime over the first couple of weeks:
The Japanese have just started issuing beans. These are a
great improvement to the diet even though we only get enough to give each man a
couple of tablespoons once a day. When they were first issued there were great
arguments as to whether they should be germinated or not. The arguments in
favour of germination (vitamin C) seem to me so obvious that I really think X
[another staff officer] must be insane as he opposed. The silly little man even
argued with the doctors. Some of the troops don’t like it. They say it makes
the beans hard! But unless the Japanese give us more meat and vegetables we are
in for a poor time. Already they have almost closed down the traffic over the
fence. Relatives and Chinese girl friends are still allowed to bring parcels of
food but these are examined and handed over by the Japs themselves. Ordinary
trade has stopped. They have shot several Chinese who have been caught selling
stuff to us. They are afraid of messages being passed into the camp.
Although actually getting out of the camp seemed quite easy,
surviving a journey through occupied territory without getting shot or
recaptured would be another matter. Very few men did escape from the POW camps
and they invariably had a rough time of it. The Japanese were not the only
potential opponents, as Dad observes:
We had both seen and heard much about the work of the 5th
Columnists, and I had heard that when the Japanese took Canton [now known as
Guangzhou], treachery and bribery were the chief reasons for the fall of the city.
As a result we thought it was impossible to trust any Chinese, particularly in
or near Hong Kong and that if we were unfortunate enough to meet one
unexpectedly, he would betray us. We had also heard that there had been
considerable guerrilla activity north of the border, but we imagined that there
were probably Freelances over whom the Chinese government would have no
control; that the term ‘guerrilla’ was a euphemism for ‘bandit’, and that if we
fell in with any of these we should be murdered.
In typical military fashion, Dad considered all the options
for escape. As the fence was not much of a barrier they could have walked out,
but there were Japanese sentries everywhere, well-lit streets and a curfew in
force. The camp was next to the sea, and bypassing the most heavily patrolled
land around the camp by escaping across a short stretch of water looked a much
more achievable route. They would then have a much better chance of returning
to land, slipping unnoticed into the backstreets and up into the scrub-covered
hills of the New Territories. Hiring a sampan would have meant trusting a
Chinese – Dad thought this too risky, but Captain Tony Hewitt did escape
successfully with the aid of a sampan. Although they could wade along the
water’s edge and then get up into the hills, their silhouettes would have been
highly visible at low tide – the only feasible time to attempt that route. They
could steal one of the sentries’ rowing boats at night and make a getaway, but
it was uncertain whether the sentries left the oars in the boats. The only
other option was to make a raft and swim for it.
One of Dad’s original companions for the escape baulked at
the absence of any safe option and withdrew. It was difficult to find any
willing companion – married men thought it irresponsible, others were sick or
wounded and most just thought the whole prospect too daunting. Anyway, we were
bound to win the war soon and then everyone would be freed, wouldn’t they? ”
ABOUT
THE AUTHOR
Mary has written numerous technical and academic articles and is
an experienced lecturer and presenter, but this is her first book. She lives in
Bath with her husband, Julian
Caldecott, and dog, Gobi. She practises as an osteopath in the picturesque
Wiltshire town of Bradford on Avon. She treats people three days a week
(see www.mmost.co.uk) and treats horses and dogs one day a
week (www.hippokampos.co.uk and www.facebook.com/the2marys). She is a Trustee
of the Sutherland Cranial College of Osteopathy (SCCO) and Member of
the Royal
Society of Medicine. She was formerly a marketing consultant, with five years
experience at what is now Price Waterhouse Coopers, and three years with
strategy consultancy, P.Four (now part of WPP). She began her marketing career
with Cadbury’s confectionery and retains a lifelong love of chocolate.
Mary was born and raised at a farm on the edge of the south
Shropshire hills, the youngest of four children. She attended Shrewsbury High
School from age four to eighteen. She spent much of her childhood on horseback,
which left her with permanent damage to her right eye, a broken nose, broken knee-cap
and broken coccyx. She has been bitten, kicked, rolled on, dragged, and has
fallen off too many times to recall, but she still rides racehorses for fun.
Website:
http://www.strangerinmyheart.co.uk/
Twitter:
@monro_m276
Thanks so much for hosting the Blog Tour today Debbie x