…

The Third Son of a Duke

…

In all the investigation of Melbourne of 1915, the more I realised that if we never go looking, we will never find out what history is, what was good, what was bad, what were the prevailing attitudes of the time.

IT gives credence to a few odd sayings I’ve heard over time, ones that are viewed with a great deal of distaste these days, but fifty, seventy, eighty years ago, they were part of what we grew up with.

The thing is, women had it very tough.  That saying you hear a lot, even these days, is ‘it’s a man’s world’, and to a certain degree it is.  Back when I was looking, women could only work until they were married, when it was expected they would stay home, and, dare I say it, attend to the man’s needs.

I have a schoolbook of my mother’s, which she used in 1942, and the back pages are filled with notes on how she was supposed to attend to her husband’s needs.

I showed it to my granddaughters, and they were totally gobsmacked.

This is the thing about the past, and it can be a problem for writers who, if they do not know about the past, can make some fatal flaws in their writing, assuming today’s standards applied back then.

Also, back then, society was very judgmental about a woman’s virtue, and there was very little she could do without society frowning on her or turning her into a pariah.  This was much the same until the sixties, when a lot of that went out the window.

Back in 1915, wow, straight laces and very well behaved. 

However, I suspect, what went on behind closed doors was a different story.

…

1995 words, for a total of 41245 words.

…

The Third Son of a Duke

…

Of course, writing letters and making extravagant claims has to have some impact, and the way he worded it, it got the desired response.

Someone wanted to give it a go.

So, off to the powers that be, a longer talk and a look at some maps, then off to camp for some soldier training, and then back for some officer training, stuff to improve that he learned at Sandhurst, and at the end of it, a commission, and a mission.

At least he got to see the pyramids and stand under the sphinx.

He also tried to find Louise, tracing her movements from disembarkation in Alexandria to the camp and then, in the general spirit of missing her by a week, finds she has been sent to a casualty clearing centre, destination, not quite sure

His destination, somewhere on the western front in France.

Now it’s time to face the horrors of war.

…

2230 words, for a total of 39250 words.

…

The Third Son of a Duke

…

Not getting off at Port Said, but going on to Alexandria to disembark with the other people involved in the war.

He is to be met on the wharf, and after disembarkation, that person could be any one of hundreds swarming towards the trains, officers barking orders and people going in all directions.

Confusion and chaos.

Then a voice comes out of the chaos.  A Staff Sergeant with a booming voice.

Orders.

Handed over, get on the train to Cairo, on your way, son….

He was just another soldier.

He goes to Cairo, reading the contents of a letter that’s marked read this first…

From his father

Then, read this second

Instructions on where to go in Cairo.

Cloak and dagger, seemingly, but he suspected it was anything but.

…

2230 words, for a total of 37175 words.

…

The Third Son of a Duke

…

Finally, our protagonist is travelling first class back to England.  He thinks to himself that if the ship is torpedoed, he might have a better chance at survival, but there is that thing about women and children first, so it’s a moot point.

A casualty of war seems his inevitable lot.

There are doctors and nurses on board, and he mentions he travelled out with a particular young lady and asks if they know her.  Only too well, and well, he does wish in the end that he didn’t ask.

It is not surprising, though, because Louise is a kind, gentle, but apparently fun-loving soul given the right circumstances, and he is, in a way, glad that she survived the voyage and found a way to be useful. And fortunately, perhaps, not married or in a serious relationship with a young doctor.

He would never be able to compete with that.

It’s a fascinating run, from Fremantle to Colombo, all the while wondering if there is a German ship out there waiting for them.

There is not.

Coaling in Aden, and then through the Red Sea, familiar territory, and heat, which he is almost accustomed to through his first stint on the way out, and then a year in outback Queensland.

No one believes him when he tells them he was cattle mustering.

They do, however, take his title seriously, and no one will call him David.

…

1915 words, for a total of 34945 words.

…

The Third Son of a Duke

…

I’ve been researching the Melbourne of March 1915, and I was basically gobsmacked.

How can you live in a city for almost half your life and know absolutely nothing about it?

Why wasn’t any of this taught to us in school?  The joke of that is that I know every king and queen of England from William the Conqueror.  I could tell you more than three Australian prime ministers, or state premiers, from when Australia was born, which, by a miracle, I do know, 1901.

As for Victoria, no idea when it became a state, no idea how it was populated beyond a gold rush in the mid-1800s, and barely anything about the Ballarat goldfields and the revolt by the miners.

My great-great-great-grandfather emigrated from England to a place called Harrow in Victoria, a place I’ve never heard of until I started tracing my ancestors, said to be the first town in Victoria.

Since my grandmother features in this story, it is around the time she meets my great-grandfather and her husband-to-be in 1914/1915 in a place called Bairnsdale, a place my father used to mention but not with the fondness a child who was born and brought up there would.

What in hell’s name happened there?

Not our problem in this story, it is just the periphery, or what I think might have happened that interests us, but only as outsiders looking in.

We have a ship to catch. And hi ho hi ho it’s off to war we go!

…

1750 words, for a total of 33030 words.

…

The Third Son of a Duke

…

A day of research…

So the first thing that was on my mind:  could the children of the rich or titled aristocracy still purchase a commission in the army or navy?

That, it seems, was taken away in the late 1800s, and they had to go to Sandhurst and join the rest of the hopefuls to get a commission or spend the time at the naval academy to become an officer.

So, our protagonist and his brothers had to go to Sandhurst after their exclusive boarding school.

More study is required to make sure I’ve got their backgrounds correct.

The duke is attached to the Admiralty, but he cannot and would not advance his son unless the boy had done the hard yards.  Sailing on the Mediterranean in a private yacht doesn’t quite reach the standards required of a naval officer.

So, once we’ve established his eligibility for a commission, if not, at what rank and where he might fit will be determined

Then there’s Egypt, the camp, the training, and the assignment to a theatre of war.  His preference would be in France, where his brother had been.

He also has no interest in not being at the front, but we will look at who was, and who was not, and why.  Certainly, Generals rarely came to the front-line trenches.

I’ve been looking at the manning of the trenches, learning there were three, and the men rotated, the second for resting, the third for supplies.

We need to know about how the artillery worked in aiding the front-line men.

We need to know the frequency of thrusts, inside and outside the larger-scale attacks, and when.

We need to know where the German lines were, the nature and size of no man’s land and the difficulties of getting across it.

It’s not the physical descriptions we will be relating, but the feelings of those participating, what they see, what happens to them, and how they recover when they are still alive at the end of just another day at the office.  What they think, especially if they will see their loved ones or family again.

I want to sit in that trench waiting for the whistle, I want to go over the top, hear the bullets whizzing past, the thwack when it finds a target, the machine gun fire, and whether it’s exhilaration running towards the enemy, or utter despair at the futility of it.

…

2315 words, for a total of 33280 words.

…

The Third Son of a Duke

…

Unless we come from small towns, how much can we know about the big cities, and living in the outer suburbs?

In my day, living in the city, the inner suburbs cost too much, which is why families found themselves on the fringe of the city.

Of course, the differences between Australia and England are stark, and it has taken a lot of reading to get up to speed.

Just when our protagonist is leaving Australia to go back home.

I wondered if I might put him on a ship that was sunk by the Germans, but the Orontes made it back in one piece.

Various diaries have information about the voyage home, and particularly from Colombo, then Aden to take on coal, then back through the Red Sea, Suez, and the canal.

There are points along the way where the guns from the Dardanelles can be heard.  There is a stop at Alexandria for the service personnel we ll to disembark.

Our chap is considering not going home but disembarking in Port Said and making his way to Cairo, where he will find out how to enlist in the British army, which has training camps in Egypt.

Then there’s that desire to see Louise and surprise her.

I’m thinking a letter will be awaiting delivery to our protagonist from his father in Aden.  In it will be instructions.

What will those instructions be?

…

1880 words, for a total of 30965 words.

…

The Third Son of a Duke

…

48 plus hours with Margaret can do a lot to simply not think about the war.

His plan to be in Melbourne shortly before the ship leaves is, of course, thwarted by wars and circumstances.

The ship is the Orontes.  It is real, it did leave Melbourne in April of 1915, and it had nearly 600 passengers that I can find, but these ships could take more.  It was also laden with cargo mostly for the mother country, among which would be war materials.

There are also nurses and doctors making the ship’s departure very emotional.

The time in Melbourne is spent in the Grand Hotel, and it’s not entirely clear whether he invites Margaret to stay or she invites herself, but after dinner on that first night, she is there the next morning.

It is not that sort of relationship.  Both are acutely aware of his commitment to Louise.  Margaret is just happy to be spoiled.  He is happy to spend some time with a friend before going to war.

While writing about this odd relationship, I find it hard not to romantically entangle them, but I have taken a step back and considered the ramifications of the day and age, of proprieties, and opinions of young women and the expectations of their peers.

It means having to completely block out current-day sexual mores and the sort of happy-go-lucky attitude and promiscuity that is the modern way of doing things.  Perhaps it happened then, too, but I’m trying to make this simple.

Dinner, dancing, sightseeing, being together — but not.

Of course, reading about the city I grew up in and never really seeing it for what it was then, is fascinating, and some of it is still there; that desire to replace architectural marvels with obscene glass and concrete has not yet completely taken over.

How marvellous it must have been to live in such an age.

…

1995 words, for a total of 29185 words.

…

The Third Son of a Duke

…

Melbourne in March 1915. 

It’s the tail end of a hot summer.

Our protagonist is expecting to see all of his friends made on that epic voyage a year before.

It’s a moment of profound disappointment.

But it is to be expected.  He cannot expect that the world was going to sit still and wait for him to decide what he’s going to do.

After all, he was supposed to be up in Queensland chasing down errant cattle for what then was a foreseeable future.

Rose is off, having visited the cousins in Footscray, and was seeking new adventures in Bairnsdale, though it’s not clear how she met anyone from there, or how it is she found herself as chief bridesmaid at a wedding in Maffra.

Louise, the new possible love of his life, had taken what little nursing training she had and parlayed it into becoming a volunteer nurse for the army, having just left, not a week or two before, to head to the front to care for the wounded.

He might just find her in Egypt, making this story almost an epic love story.

And Margaret, still in Melbourne, who got the letter he sent that morning, which is why she is at the station to greet him.

He has mixed feelings about Margaret, which he has had since their encounter in Naples.

If it wasn’t for Louise…

…

2325 words, for a total of 27190 words.

…

The Third Son of a Duke

…

A year passes, replacements are found, and it’s time to leave.

Of course, being in the middle of wartime, Australia is busy requisitioning ships to take soldiers, nurses, and doctors, plus supplies to the various fronts. Getting home might not be as easy as he thought it might be.

Passage will require a government permit and finding out when the next available ship that hasn’t been requisitioned is available, hoping that it is not fully booked with other passengers, doctors and nurses, and soldiers returning.

And if he is lucky enough to get a berth, it will cost more, as no doubt the shipping company is running a risk of being torpedoed on the high seas.

There are basically no convoys and no naval escorts.

It is also just after Australia has sent a large contingent to Egypt in preparation for the Dardanelles offensive, aka Gallipoli.

Before he goes, he sends his father a letter, one that states that he is no longer standing on the sidelines and is heading home to take up the fight his brothers had started, and from which one had died in service to his country.

He had also got a note from one of his contemporaries, read ex school bullying that basically calls him a coward who ran away.  The white feather sent makes a pretty damning statement.

Thus, from the cattle station to Brisbane in a plane, probably experiencing what was soon to become passenger flights, and getting a few ideas about aerial reconnaissance, which no doubt others were already considering, he gets a series of trains to Melbourne.

Back then, travel was far more difficult, and in wartime, a far more difficult proposition.

…

2105 words, for a total of 24865 words.