Download or read book Colonel Belchamp’s Battlefield Tour written by Adrian Crisp and published by Troubador Publishing Ltd. This book was released on 2017-04-25 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It is May 1964. Devastated by the death of his small son, James Butland returns to the 1940 battlefields in France where he served as an 18 year old in the defence of Calais protecting the western flank of the Dunkirk beaches. There he reviews his life, the conflicts of growing up in the interwar years and the approach of war in 1939. On the threshold of going up to Oxford University, war is declared and James is plunged, not unwillingly, into the role of a soldier. Wounded in the defence of Calais in May 1940, he is hidden from the Germans by a French medical student, Agnes, and following a brief affair, she helps him to escape to England in a small boat. James is posted to the bitter campaign in Tunisia where he is again wounded and is discharged from active service. He resolves to replace killing with saving lives and, influenced by Agnes’s example, he chooses to study medicine. James’s career flourishes in London and later in Cambridge. However his family’s new life is shattered by the death of his 9 year old son in a road accident. On a whim during his return to the 1940 battlefields in 1964, James traces Agnes. Their reunion against the background of despair creates new conflicts of conscience but also some prospect of recovery and hope. Colonel Belchamp’s Battlefield Tour is a poignant and moving tale that will appeal to those with an interest in the human impact of war and its aftermath. "This story of love and death pivots on the sacrificial defence of Calais in 1940, ordered by Churchill to demonstrate Britain’s will to fight. Written with personal passion, historical vision and clinical insight, it is by turns moving, exciting and illuminating. A novel about one young man’s experience that rivets your attention to its dramatic end.” – Piers Brendon “A novel built on sustained historical research, and all the stronger for it. A wonderful blend of fact and fiction.” – Allen Packwood, Director of the Churchill Archives Centre, Churchill College, Cambridge