I was intrigued as to why the men had stayed in the little village when they could have walked away for four whole days and my motive in writing was to record my findings. 
How the Book Came to be Written
I've been thinking long and hard about how to categorise the book and, frankly, I'm stumped. It's not really a historical novel nor is it traditional military history.
Perhaps it is best to leave it to the description which Tim Lynch who did the review for the WH Smith magazine “Britain at War” in January 2008
“There are some parallels with Thomas Keneally's 'Schindler's List' in the true story fleshed out by fiction (or educated guesses about characters and their behaviour) to fill the gaps. I suppose you could find some similarities with Pat Barker's Regeneration trilogy or even Len Deighton's military stuff but I still think that billing it as somewhere between Bernard Cornwell and Richard Holmes is the best bet. That covers both the exciting adventure element and the military history. I would be tempted to say it blends fact and fiction to dramatise the 'scraps and chaps' school of history in a new way”.
Not an easy one to answer is it?
Perhaps this is because when I started to write it I did not know how it would end. I had been used to writing articles for the academic press, reviews of books and papers, articles on art and on psychotherapy and chapters in books on systemic thinking but always articles which had to be in large measure based on research; either my own of that of colleagues.
I was introduced to the subject of my book very early on. In 1948 I left the army and spent my demobilisation leave in Paris visiting the family of a French girl with whom I had been corresponding for the last two years of my service. One of the amusements of the group of young French people to whom I was introduced was every weekend hitch-hiking out into the countryside to see how far they could travel from Paris within the period from Friday night to Sunday night. To travel out to find the grave of my uncle in Normandy was regarded as easy. It should have been in that by Saturday we had got to the spot where the War Office had said he was buried “25 miles north east of Le Havre in a village called Criquebeuf.
There was indeed a village called Criquebeuf at that spot on the map. But that was Criquebeuf-en-Caux and there was only the grave of a British airman. We spent the rest of the weekend searching for any other Criquebeuf and on Sunday afternoon we gave up the task and got a lift in a lorry whose driver said that he could take us some way to find the main road to Paris where we could get a lift. He dropped us outside a village where he said he had to call on a client. He dropped us on the road outside the village cemetery before he turned at a crossroad. He never mentioned that his client lived in a village called Criquebeuf-sur-Seine and we had been too despondent to say what we had been doing. When we jumped down from the lorry we looked through the railings round the cemetery and the first thing we saw was the grave of Jack Speight.
We gave up any idea of returning to Paris that night. The local post office was just closing but we were able to send a telegram to Madeleine’s parents explaining that we would be home the next day. We camped outside the village by the Seine and the next day we went to the Mairie, the local village town hall, where we were told that jack Speight and some other soldiers had indeed been killed there and that there was one man who had seen them killed and could tell us how they died.
This man had a house which overlooked the river and although the majority of the villagers had left on the ninth of June some five persons had stayed of whom he was one. He told me through Madeleine acting as translator the following which I noted down in my sketch book:
I was awoken by the sound of gunfire then there was a great explosion and I looked out of my window and saw the men run from the direction of the bridge. They jumped in the river and swam across the river except for one man who picked up the rifles the others had thrown down and fired on the Germans who had run down the alley by the side of my house and stopped them being able to get the swimmers in their sights. When they swam across and stood up on the bank the Germans could see them and they were shot and then the man on this side was also shot when his ammo ran out”
We re-visited the Mairie and they confirmed this story and told us that the Germans had refused the request that they should be buried and they lay where they fell for three months. When they were buried any personal effects on their bodies were put into the Mairie archives and the only thing from any of the British soldiers was a packet of letters. This was given to me. It was solid tablet of mud stained letters, so badly stuck together as to only be readable on the top page. Fortunately it had been written in pencil. It said:-
My darling wife, I am writing this but don’t know where I shall post it since we have been cut off from our lot for four days. Don’t worry though we have plenty to eat from stuff in abandoned houses and shops and we have plenty of fags. I catch rabbits from snares
There the message ended since it was impossible to separate the fragile small pages. I knew that it was not from my uncle since he was unmarried and in any case incapable of setting a snare. I felt that I could not forward the letter and in any case I doubted whether the man’s widow would welcome a reminder of her loss eight years after the event. I gave it back to the Mairie and it has since been lost. It is however easily identified as being written by Harry Polson who was a noted poacher in his civilian life.
I then forgot about this for forty years. Do not blame me too much. I was nineteen and life was exciting. However my own personal history did enable me to make a start again in 1990. I was at that time working as the head of the training course in the use of art in treating mental illness at the French National Training Institute for Psychiatric Personnel (INFIPP) in Dijon. In 1989 I had a student who came from Normandy. Chatting to her I told her that I had an uncle who was buried in a place called Criquebeuf near to Rouen. She said that she knew the village and if any time I had the notion to re-visit the grave that I could stay with her and her husband. In 1990 I was working in the hospital in Rouen and went to stay with Maryvonne. This was the start of a long lasting friendship where she became my chauffeur and a co-seeker after the truth.
I was intrigued as to why the men had stayed in the little village when they could have walked away for four whole days and my motive in writing was to record my findings.
To some extent the factual element was not too difficult once the internet came of age. Before that wonderful instrument I would have been restricted to the research on the British soldiers; indeed most of that was complete as far as their personalities were concerned by the mid-nineties.
I was in contact with the families of Harry Polson and Val Thomas within a few weeks of starting the task in 1990. An advertisement in the local newspapers and the answers from families and friends of the two men came in; all wondering why I was asking. I had no need to enquire of the family and friends of Jack Speight since he was my uncle and I was living back in my home village after thirty five years in London. I had tremendous help from both families; by visiting and talking to Val’s widow I gained a very full picture of his life and personality before he left to go to France in 1939. Similarly Harry’s daughter and grandson’s furnished a very complete picture. I was privileged to have access to the complete collection of Harry’s letters home from his army period. I grew to have a great fondness for Harry and his friend “Smith18”from whom I had a letter explaining how he got separated from Harry after the order to retreat. I also had the chance to exchange letters with the widow of Sonny Howard who sent me copies of his letters detailing the journeys across Normandy during the winter of ‘39/’40.
By the mid-nineties I was in possession of all the war diaries of the various Auxiliary Pioneer Corps units in which the men had served, thanks above all to the help of the honorary historian of the Corps Lt-Colonel John Starling. I had interviewed Brigadier-General Blanchard, who in 1939 had been a lieutenant in the same unit of the Beauman Division as my men and whose notes on the period were provided by John Starling. By the end of the nineties I had a very complete picture of the situation; indeed John was kind enough to say that I probably had a better knowledge of that part of history than anyone else.
I had almost no information on the French men and certainly nothing at all on the Senegalese soldier.