GIVING THANKS FOR A LUCKY CHARM

We don’t celebrate Thanksgiving here in Australia, so I thought I would blog about a lucky charm, a magic silver boomerang (a boomerang is an Australian aboriginal hunting weapon), that brought my father home from war.

I always scoffed at magic or lucky charms. If I couldn’t see it, I didn’t believe in it. Well, that is not until I visited my Dad’s sister, a sprightly old dear in her nineties. It was the 30^th anniversary of my father’s death.

After a watery, milky cup of tea and some stale cake, that Aunty said she had baked the previous day, but I think it could have been the previous week, she started telling me about the silver boomerang, which we had found many years ago amongst my late father’s war medals.  The boomerang bore the words “I go to return.”

It was a good luck charm, and my father apparently wore it throughout the 2^nd World War.  There was magic in the boomerang, the lady who had given to him was convinced of it, as was my aunt. Whether Dad believed in it or not, I have no idea.

The original owner apparently survived the carnage of the 1^st World War.  So, did the good luck charm live up to its name the second time around?

In March 1940 Dad felt duty bound to answer his country’s call to war. When the Japanese poured into Malaya he was there as a member of the 2/29^th Battalion of the Australian 8^th Division, (most of whom ended up dying as Prisoners of War).

Wounded in action in Malaya, and transferred to an Australian Military Hospital in Singapore, my father was blown out of bed, but survived the Japanese bombs which took the roof off his ward.  The British forces fell back across the causeway into Singapore. Day and night the fires burned.  The bombers came over spreading their destruction. Shattered shops were left to the mercy of looters, bodies rotted in the streets, and packs of marauding dogs gorged themselves with little resistance, as a pall of black smoke hung over Singapore. The giant British guns that might have saved Singapore were embedded in concrete and pointing out to sea. Useless to quell the invaders who came over land through the jungle.

All aircraft and ships had departed loaded with civilians, nurses and wounded, and after this desperate flotilla sailed off, those left behind could only await their fate.

In the last terrible days before Singapore capitulated in February 1942, trapping 80,000 Australian and British troops, a small boat braved the might of the Japanese air force and navy, and set off, crammed with wounded.  Only soldiers who were too incapacitated to fight yet could somehow mobilise themselves, were given the opportunity for this one last chance of escape.

With a piece of his back bone shot away, and weakened from attacks of malaria, Dad had somehow made it to the wharf, with a rifle and the clothes he stood up in. As the boat wended its way out of the Singapore harbour, littered with the smouldering debris of dying ships, a Japanese bomber dived low over them, but the pilot obviously had more important targets on his mind.

They drifted around in the sea for several days until they were finally rescued by a passing allied ship and after another couple of weeks, Dad finally made it home.

Thank you magic boomerang for helping my Dad make it home. 

Margaret Tanner is a multi-published author of historical romance with Whiskey Creek Press and The Wild Rose Press.

Her website is:  http://www.margarettanner.com/

I am giving away an e-copy of my WCP novel, Savage Utopia, to one lucky commentator.

Savage Utopia Blurb:

On board the convict ship taking them to the penal colony of Australia, Maryanne Watson and Jake Smith meet and fall in love, but Jake hides a terrible secret that will take him to the gallows if it ever comes out.
On arrival in Sydney the lovers are separated. Maryanne is sent to work for the lecherous Captain Fitzhugh. After he attacks her she flees into the wilderness and eventually meets up with Jake who has escaped from a chain gang.  They set up home in a hidden valley and Maryanne falls pregnant.  Will Jake come out of hiding to protect his fledgling family? And how can love triumph over such crushing odds?

www.whiskeycreekpress.com

REMEMBRANCE DAY - Red poppies and apple blossom

                        The 11^th of November, is Armistice Day or Remembrance Day. It commemorates the signing of the Armistice to end the carnage of World War 1. On this day we spare a thought, and give heartfelt thanks to the brave men and women who bought freedom with their blood. The wearing of a red poppy on this day symbolizes their sacrifice.

                               

            The battlefields of France and Belgium were covered with red poppies, and they grew profusely, nurtured by the blood of thousands of soldiers. In Northern France when he saw the poppies growing on the battlefield, a Canadian officer, Lt.Col. John McCrae penned his immortal poem. In Flanders Fields. Moina Michael, who worked for the American YMCA, read the poem just before the Armistice was signed. It moved her so much she decided to wear a red poppy in remembrance of the fallen.

 I thought the following story was appropriate. Soldiers sacrificed their lives on the battlefields. The women they left behind wept and mourned, often living a sad and solitary life, bereft of children and the men they loved.

             

            The title for my little story is – CALL OF THE APPLE BLOSSOM.

Mary wore her hair pulled back into two tight little plaits that met at the back of her head. She stared sightlessly ahead, not blind in the literal sense, but blind to the future and the present.  She had sight now only for the past.
            Memories in a kaleidoscope of colour flashed through her brain. Gone, erased forever would be the pitying looks from the nursing staff, other patients and their visitors in the geriatric ward. She moved her hands, with the grotesque, arthritic knuckles to brush a fly away from her face.
            The nurse came over, starched and pristine in her uniform, to tuck in the blankets.  Mary had suffered a stroke, which partially paralysed her. Just because she’d lost the power of speech didn’t mean she was deaf. She smiled inwardly, because her slack lips were incapable of forming a smile.  People talked about her, thinking she could not hear them.
            “Poor old thing doesn’t get any visitors,” they would say. “Been here twenty years and hasn’t ever had any mail, not even a card for Christmas, Mother’s day or her birthday. Unloved and with no-one to care. It’s such a shame.” They would shake their heads as they discussed her.  How she hated their pitying looks.
            She wasn’t lonely, wasn’t unloved either.  She did have a visitor, a special one who came from another age, through the swirling mists of time, came fleetingly, but more and more often now, closer and closer. She could almost reach out and touch him. Could smell the scent of apple blossom he brought with him from the orchards that had once been their home.
            She glanced at the other occupant of the ward, Jessie who pushed her teeth in and out all the time, and dribbled saliva from the corner of her mouth.  Who would want visitors like Jessie’s?  Her daughter paid duty visits, accompanied by the granddaughter in skin-tight jeans and too tight tee shirt, and her loutish boyfriend with his bleached frizzy hair and earrings dangling from his nose and eyebrows.
            No, she did not miss having visitors like that. She had memories more precious than the most beautiful flower and they would not wither or die, because they had been nurtured through the years by a million teardrops. Fresh, poignant memories even the ravages of time and age could not destroy.
            The end would come soon now. Each time her visitor came, he always brought the scent of those blossoms with him. She reached out her hand - so close, but as their fingers bridged the time barrier and almost touched, he would disappear.
            No, William could never really leave her.  His memory was locked in her heart for eternity. A misty veil came down. She felt his presence and tried to call him through the mists of years, but the time had not yet come, and he disappeared into the swirling clouds that had separated them for so long.
            Through the years, she often heard the muted march of countless feet, as ghostly battalions passed by as they marched to immortality.
            William, her tall, handsome husband, with his blonde wavy hair and deep blue eyes, had donned khaki and sailed away with a smile on his lips.  He promised to return, but a bullet had cut him down in foreign fields.  Every now and again, the scent of apple blossom wafted on the air, alerting Mary that her love was not too far away.  Everything became confused.  Had William really marched off to fight in a war on the other side of the world?  Had he died on some blood stained foreign field, or was it all a dream?  A dreadful nightmare, when she would awaken and see him standing at the gate again.  They would be smiling and laughing as he grasped her hand so they could run through the orchard like carefree children.  The soft winds would cause the blossom to cascade upon them softly, nebulous as tiny snowflakes.  The air would hang heavy with their perfume, and the sound of bees buzzing carried on the stillness.
            Oh careless youth, who knew no sorrow.  Who had no inkling of the black clouds forming on the horizon to blot out their sun.  For this would be their last meeting. No, it wasn’t a dream, awake or asleep the memory remained.
            A strange silence shrouded the ward, interrupted intermittently by the clacking of Jessie’s false teeth. Mary lay in bed with a screen pulled around her. A man in a white coat stared down at her. She didn’t remember going to bed.  In fact all she remembered was the apple orchard and running hand in hand with her handsome soldier.
            A breeze rustled the curtains hanging over the opened window, and the soft swishing changed into the muted marching of many feet, as ghostly columns of a long dead army passed by.  On the breeze came the first scent of blossom as it drifted through the window, gradually becoming stronger and more overpowering. The room filled with a perfume so strong Mary felt as if she was back under the trees in the orchard.  The white coat turned into khaki, the years rolled back as if they had never been, and she knew now that the time had come for her to slip away and join William and his comrades.

Wild Oats, my novel from the Wild Rose Press, is set against a background of the 1^st World War. It was an EPIC Finalist last year. One lucky blogger will win a PDF copy of Wild Oats.  Please leave your e-mail address.

http://www.thewildrosepress.com/wild-oats-p-3893.html

My website: http://www.margarettanner.com/

ROMANCE AWARENESS IN A TIME OF WAR

Margaret Tanner adding her take on Romance Awareness month.

 

All stories of love lost and found are touching.  For sheer poignancy, nothing can compare with a love story set against a background of war. Picture it, a young woman farewelling her man as he marches off to battle. Fear and pride in her heart. Only God knows his destiny. Is there a bullet with his name written on it, waiting for him in some foreign field? Are memories all she will have to comfort her in the long lonely years ahead? Maybe a faded photograph of a young soldier who never reached his full potential, because he bought freedom with his blood?

 

The following scene comes from my novel, Wild Oats, which was an EPICON 2010 Finalist.

The year is 1914, just prior to Tommy Calvert’s embarkation for the 1^st World War. On their honeymoon, he and Allison attended a dance.

The lights dimmed when the Tango was introduced. Every man in the ballroom held his partner close. This dance had made the Palais ballroom notorious. Evil, depraved and immoral, were a few of the descriptive words printed by the newspapers, but Allison liked it. Even though neither she nor Tommy could dance, they copied the antics of others, and laughed and clapped as much as anyone.

The tempo of the place quietened when the saxophones in the band started up to accompany the man who sang, “If you were the only girl in the world, and I was the only boy...” They stood close together, listening, until it finished.

“Let’s leave now,” Tommy said, and Allison waited near the door as he went to collect her coat. He helped her into it, took her hand and they left.

Instead of making for the train station, Tommy led her towards the beach. It was a cool night, with dark clouds scudding across the sky. Like thousands of glow-worms, the stars twinkled. The breeze blowing straight in off the sea smelt moist and salty, the sand soft beneath her feet.

They didn’t speak as they strolled away from the lighted Palais. Except for the muted sound of the waves, silence reigned on the beach, and Allison felt as if they were the last two people left in the world.

Tommy stopped and drew her close. “I love you, Allison.” He started whistling the tune. “If you were the only girl in the world, and I was the only boy,” softly in her ear and she leaned her head against his chest.

A magic spell cocooned them. She didn’t want to speak, lest the spell be broken. Some instinct from deep within warned her this moment, once it disappeared, would never come again. She closed her eyes to shut out everything except Tommy’s nearness.

 

Meanwhile, twelve thousand miles across the sea, German artillery pounded French villages into oblivion.

 Wild Oats is published by The Wild Rose Press

http://www.thewildrosepress.com/wild-oats-p-3893.html

GETTING TO KNOW MARGARET TANNER

 

Margaret Tanner reporting in for my very first blog at The Roses Of Prose. A proud moment indeed. I will be posting here on the 11^th and 23^rd of each month.

Well, I guess I should introduce myself to those who don’t know me. I come from the land down under, Australia. The land of the kangaroo, koala, platypus and emu, just to name a few of our unique animals. Much of our flora and fauna is found no where else in the world.

We have a fascinating landscape, beautiful white sandy beaches, rugged mountains that are snow-covered in winter. We have rain forests and deserts. In fact, believe it or not, Australia is one of the driest and oldest continents on earth. We are English speaking with our own special Aussie slang.

The first white people to settle in Australia (1788), came mainly from England, Ireland and Scotland. We started out as a penal colony. Somewhere for the English to dump their unwanted convicts, and thus our early history is a blood-stained one.

Slowly a British society evolved based on the distinctions between convicts and free settlers, but as some of the convicts prospered once they gained their freedom, they tried to erase the stain of their convict blood and many of our early documents were destroyed. The discovery of gold in the 1850’s caused another wave of mass migration, this time comprised of many nations, although those from the British Isles were still the most dominant.

I am multi-published with Whiskey Creek Press and The Wild Rose Press. I enjoy delving into the pages of history as I carry out my research for the Australian historical romance novels that I love to write. No book is too old or tattered for me to trawl through, no museum too dusty, or cemetery too overgrown. Many of my novels have been inspired by true events, with one being written around the hardships and triumphs of my pioneering ancestors in frontier Australia.

In the course of research, and also because I have always been interested in the 1^st World War, I have toured the battlefields of France, Belgium and Turkey. A truly poignant experience. I spent time (10 minutes was long enough) inside an old historical jail, just to see how it felt, because one of my heroine’s was imprisoned for a crime she did not commit.  The thing that affected me the most was the cold. It was absolutely freezing in this stone cell, even though it was hot outside.

I am a member of the Romance Writers of Australia, the Melbourne Romance Writers Group (MRWG) and EPIC.  Oh, and I have won a few literary awards along the way too, but being a modest little violet, I won’t bore you with a blow by blow description.

If you would like to find out more about me and my books, my website is:   http://www.margarettanner.com/

My publishers are:

The Wild Rose Press    http://www.thewildrosepress.com/margaret-tanner-m-281.html

Whiskey Creek Press    www.whiskeycreekpress.com

My next visit at The Roses of Prose blog will be on the 23^rd August, so I hope you will drop by again and say G’day to me and my fellow talented roses of prose.