The Men of Operation Pied Piper

 

One of my favorite things about being part of Coffee Pot Blog Tours is meeting new authors and being introduced to tidbits of history that I might not have learned about otherwise. Today, Keith Stuart is my guest with some insight into his new book, Pied Piper.

Welcome, Keith!

~ Samantha

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Men's Health in Pied Piper

Guest Post by Keith Stuart

As the Pied Piper story arc unfolded and developed, two key events shaped the narrative through which I was going to explore my two principal themes – the nature of close male friendship and the issue of mental health in men. The latter is an increasingly significant contemporary topic but, of course, it’s not new and I wanted to consider how it might have manifested itself at a time when men were even less open in their expression of emotions than they might be now.

To explore both issues, as triggers, two events in the story took me into matters relating to health care – simple, physical health care, not mental health care. At the time of the story, mental illness was either denied or treated with contempt and care was either non-existent or crude and cruel. I had two events where illness or injury had real significance: they are key to the main character’s story.

In 1939 there was, of course, no national health service. Never mind the absence of mobile phones, few had a phone in the house from which to call for help. The 999 service was only introduced in London in 1937 but not for an ambulance. There was no A&E to offer painkillers, swift diagnoses, and treatment. All these historical details were good for my story but managing it, and getting the facts right, required some research. How were certain conditions treated in 1939 (I’m desperately trying to avoid spoilers here!) and what facilities were available? What is now ‘free’ was either simply not available or incurred a direct and immediate cost. What happened when someone couldn’t meet such costs?

I didn’t need minute detail but did need to get the broad picture right: I didn’t want any to have the story’s credibility destroyed for a lack of accuracy. The story isn’t about health care in the 1930s or the establishment of the NHS which, after all, didn’t come for another ten years after my story is set, but what wasn’t available, what couldn’t be done for someone sick or injured, was significant to the story.

It is really hard to imagine the grief that was experienced during the two World Wars. Few if any families will have been untouched by grief and the scale and duration of events is impossible for subsequent generations to grasp. I can’t. The COVID crisis of 2020/21 has given me the closest idea in my lifetime of the sense of national anxiety, fear of losing those closest to you, of the care available to us and of our resources generally being overwhelmed and exhausted. The quantity and quality of support for mental health issues have been questioned for some time and are now seen to be woefully inadequate. They are going to be sorely tested and likely overwhelmed in the coming months and years, as the consequences of the pandemic unfold. But what happened in 1939, when there were none, when there was little understanding of grief and anxiety and no expectation of anything more by way of help than “Pull yourself together” and “Move on”?

As I did not need fine detail, internet searches regarding access to and types of treatment were enough and I do hope that no one with far more historical or, indeed, medical knowledge finds errors. There’s poetic licence but there is a duty to get it fundamentally right, I think. The historical backdrop to Pied Piper provided the canvas on which to paint issues that I wanted to explore.

Pied Piper by Keith Stuart

In September 1939 the British Government launched Operation Pied Piper. To protect them from the perils of German bombing raids, in three days millions of city children were evacuated - separated from their parents.

This story tells of two families: one whose children leave London and the other which takes them in. We share the ups and downs of their lives, their dramas and tragedies, their stoicism and their optimism. But. unlike many other stories and images about this time, this one unfolds mainly through the eyes of Tom, the father whose children set off, to who knew where, with just a small case and gas mask to see them on their way.

Available on Amazon US, Amazon UK,

Amazon CA, Amazon AU

FREE with Kindle Unlimited!

Connect with Keith

Keith Stuart (Wadsworth) taught English for 36 years in Hertfordshire schools, the county in which he was born and has lived most of his life. Married with two sons, sport, music and, especially when he retired after sixteen years as a headteacher, travel, have been his passions. Apart from his own reading, reading and guiding students in their writing; composing assemblies; writing reports, discussion and analysis papers, left him with a declared intention to write a book. Pied Piper is ‘it’. Starting life as a warm-up exercise at the Creative Writing Class he joined in Letchworth, it grew into this debut novel.

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