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The Third Son of a Duke

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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.

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2315 words, for a total of 33280 words.

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The Third Son of a Duke

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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?

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1880 words, for a total of 30965 words.

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The Third Son of a Duke

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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.

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1995 words, for a total of 29185 words.

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The Third Son of a Duke

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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…

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2325 words, for a total of 27190 words.

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The Third Son of a Duke

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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.

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2105 words, for a total of 24865 words.

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The Third Son of a Duke

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War is declared … on the other side of the world.

Of course, things happen, but our Protagonist is nowhere near any of it.  He learns of the conflagration via a rather interesting young lady who flies a plane, delivering mail and urgent supplies to the outlying stations.

Her explanation, a summary of newspaper reports, goes something like this:

“Declare war.  Some Serbian geezer assassinated some old geezer, the Archduke for Austria or some such, and his wife, then the Kaiser, some other old geezer in Germany said he’d back them to attack the assassin’s country, and now it’s on for young and old.  Guys are lining up to enlist, thinking it’s going to be a lark.  Mad, completely mad.”

Where does that leave our protagonist?

Back in the saddle.  The war has affected them too, with several of the station hands taking off to Winton and beyond to enlist.  He was not going anywhere.  But the thought is there, that notion of enlisting himself.  For the moment, though, there was work to be done.

Letters from home. The first was from his wavering girlfriend, who told him she had moved on,  the others from his family, but eventually one from his father, the news he wasn’t quite expecting. The death at war of his eldest brother, the Duck to be, the title moving down to the next son, the brother above him.

Does that mean he now becomes the second son of the duke?

But now he can use his brother’s death at the hands of the enemy as an excuse to enlist and go mete out some retribution.

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1630 words, for a total of 22760 words.

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The Third Son of a Duke

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Well, if the wharf at Pinkenba in Brisbane is anything to go by, a tin shed and a wharf that the ship is considerably longer than, then where the hell had he finished up?

The port of Brisbane in 1914 didn’t amount to much, but it did have a railway station and a train he could catch to Brisbane proper.  From there, it was another two trains from Brisbane to Rockhampton and then to Winton.

Outback Queensland, Australia.  Fortunately, Winter is coming, but it’s not going to be the winters of England. Although cool at night, the temperatures in the tropics were much warmer.

From Winton, it’s a truck ride from the station to the cattle station, about 20 miles or so from the front gate.  It’s big with thousands of acres, and the station house is like an oasis in the middle of scrub.  His uncle owns the station with other family members. They raise beef cattle for export to their home country. As the war approaches, the war effort will likely require supplying beef for the army.

But war is not yet upon them, and he is introduced to life on the land.

His guide is his cousin, a girl about his sister’s age, and the difference between his cousin and his sister is as wide as a chasm.  His cousin is a station hand, manager, personnel manager, musterer, and guide.  She will be the one to train him up in what will be required, and with no time to unpack his belongings, they’re out into the wilds for a week’s orientation.

Luckily he can ride a horse.

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1980 words, for a total of 21125 words.

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The Third Son of a Duke

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Six weeks in a boat can be a long or short time, depending on the circumstances.  To use a pun, of sorts, our protagonist is going to be all at sea with his feelings, while knowing that family obligations, and the upcoming parting at Melbourne with those he had spent quite some time with, will be leaving the ship.

That is going to be an interesting chapter, because there is a sad parting and an unexpected one.

The thing here is that the intrepid adventurers all seem to come together at some point over the voyage, and since they are all trying to achieve the same thing, though some still have that ‘so-called’ outdated idea of marriage as security, that notion of independent women was stirring within this group.

Our protagonist is more like a fly on the wall than actively stirring the pot, but it is a theme of those days, the end of a golden period of emigration, of luxury ships, and the start of something new. 

Of course, it would take a World War to change the status of women and their ability to work and prove themselves.  It’s how to subtly weave this into the story.

But, since the story is following our protagonist, he is off to Queensland and a life he never expected could have happened to him in a million years.  It will be so different to the cold, wet, green lands of Derbyshire back home; culture shock doesn’t even begin to describe it.

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1655 words, for a total of 19145 words.

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The Third Son of a Duke

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We pass through Naples, go to visit a museum where Margaret, one of the group, manages to take our protagonist aside for a conversation, the passengers see Mt Vesuvius spewing a little smoke and ash as they enter the harbour, see a few warships, then move on to Toulon, where there are warships.

There’s a dance, and it seems everyone is accomplished to a degree, that old 18th-century notions that women can play the piano, dance at balls, and sit around doing needlepoint hang in the air as pre-requisites for a good wife.

Until the modern dances come out and change the atmosphere.  Am I trying too hard to transition the world into a different one, from old ideas to a new world?

There is a war hanging over everything as it is early 1914, and signs of it are everywhere.

Port Said, the entrance to the Suez Canal, and the start of the hot weather.  Going ashore is for getting hot-weather clothes.  Until they leave Colombo in Ceylon, it’s going to be hot and steamy, where staying in cabins overnight is going to be difficult, and passengers find their way to the decks to spend the night in the cool air.

It’s slow going down the Canal until they get to Suez to take on a pilot to navigate the Red Sea.  A few days before passing through the Gulf of Aden, this time not stopping in Aden for coal and onwards to Colombo.

I will throw in a dining engagement with the captain in first class, just to have some fun with the people out protagonist would usually be travelling with, but hates to be associated with. 

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2110 words, for a total of 17490 words.

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The Third Son of a Duke

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So we are getting the back stories for a few of the passengers, a group forms, of which our protagonists are part of; my grandmother is there, but only as a floating member. I have given her a role that gels with the protagonist as a friend, though more aloof than the others.  As the son of a Duke, and therefore of aristocratic bearing, he and my grandmother will act as chaperones for the other girls who attach themselves to the group that gathers in the lounge.

He will prefer her as a companion while the likes of Louise tend to make a more romantic impact.  But, as one might expect of the time, he is uncertain of his arrangement with the arranged marriage, so he cannot commit to anything other than a respectable friendship, which he makes quite plain from the outset.

He is not looking for romance.  Others might be.

I also have a look at the reasons why so many disaffected young women are leaving England for a new life in Australia, far from the poverty, and worse, class distinction, the lack of opportunities for women, and the lack of acceptable husbands, not that they are looking.  There are also aspects of societal expectation that a woman doesn’t work and is meant to have children and look after their husbands.

This is a period where the unwritten rule of what society believes is a woman’s place in society is taking a beating, and women want more from their lives.  After all, suffragettes are fighting for electoral equality; at least in Australia, these girls will have a vote. 

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1455 words, for a total of 16835 words.