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A Matter of Life and Death (Published by, World Film Publications 1946)
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The film starred David Niven as RAF pilot Peter Carter. It opens with his Lancaster about to crash, he longs to hear a human voice before he dies. He radios in and reaches an American girl called June, she is a WAC stationed on an English airfield.
Next, he awakens on a lonely part of the English coastline. Is he alive or dead?, perhaps in some other world?
He finds June and they fall in love; then a messenger arrives from the “Other World” saying
that the celestial authorities made a mistake and Peter should really be dead. Will he please accompany the messenger as Peter cannot
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| remain on Earth any longer. Naturally Peter, having fallen in love with June, doesn’t want to leave and the book is essentially his struggle, and June’s, to keep him on Earth. It all sounds rather fanciful I know, but it’s actually a very enjoyable book.
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Return Via Dunkirk by Gun Buster (Hodder & Stoughton, 1940)
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| This book was written by a young Royal Artillery officer who lands with his Regiment in France in 1939.
He recounts various exploits in what would become known as the ‘phoney war’ period after which, his Regiment goes into
action. The story culminating when the Regiment has to destroy its own artillery pieces and vehicles at Dunkirk after being
given the “dubious honour” (as he terms it) of being part of the rearguard.
This is an exciting tale and the author penned several more war stories after this one (I have read them all and this, his first,
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ranks as the best in my opinion).
He wrote under the pseudonym of Gun Buster, I don’t know who he actually was; just a serving officer who was there at the time.
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Bullets & Billets (published 1916)
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This is Bruce Bairnsfather’s account of his first 6 months in France. The book’s text is interspersed with the famous
“Old Bill” cartoons.
Many of you will know the Fragments magazines but Bairnsfather also wrote several books, all of which are highly sort after
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