Writing About the Unheralded Strength of Women in a Time of War

Writing about the Unheralded Strength of Women in a Time of War

Juliet Greenwood

I loved writing The Last Train from Paris, published by Storm Publishing on 23rd October 2023. The novel was largely inspired by family stories I’ve heard all my life, as well as childhood memories of my mum’s family and friends in France, and the teachers at my school who were refugees from France and Germany. 

They were all part of the generation whose most vivid experiences had been made during WW2, both here in the UK and in mainland Europe. As a child and young adult I simply absorbed them, surrounded mainly by my mum and dad’s memories of the war on the outskirts of Birmingham.

It has only been as I’ve grown older that I’ve begun to understand more of the family from just outside Paris who were forced to flee their home at just a few hours’ notice when the German army invaded, with nothing more than they could carry, refugees in their own country, following the roads towards safety with enemy planes liable to attack from above at any moment. Then there was a teacher at school who, as a nineteen year old Jewish boy, had been told by his family to leave Germany to escape the holocaust. Later, there was the elderly German woman who had survived a concentration camp, and, even in the safety of 1980’s London, always kept a bag of belongings with her, ready to flee at a moment’s notice. 

These memories and impressions came together after my parents had died, and we found in my dad’s belongings the letters he and my mum had sent to each other as sweethearts while she was studying near Paris as a seventeen year old and he was working in London. They are simply touching love-letters, until you see the date on the envelopes, and realise these were written in late August 1939, each one closer to the day WW2 began. At the very bottom of the pile was a small plain postcard, scrawled hastily in pencil.

It was from my mum, telling my dad she had managed to get back to England the day war broke out, and that her ferry had been stalked by a German submarine as they crossed the channel. I remember the hairs on the back of my neck rising, as it really hit home that all those stories of survival, of grief and trauma that had been carried for a lifetime, really were real. I was finally seeing them through Mum’s eyes as she scrawled that note after her terrifying journey, having watched a country descend towards war and enemy occupation. I had no idea how you survived something like that, either physically or emotionally, and then go on to build a life that, yes I can see was irrevocably scarred, but also rich and fulfilled. 

It has only been sifting through my memories, along with my research as I began to form the story for The Last Train from Paris, that I began to see just how much of the survival of war comes down to the unheralded strength and heroism of the women who work together, who cooperate in the way women do all over the world, to keep families safe, to keep things as normal as possible in the most desperate of circumstances, and who survive to build a new future, whatever the grief and trauma they have faced. I’m not in any way denigrating the heroism and the trauma faced by the men sent off to fight, or who deal with the aftermath as medics and firefighters. It’s just that the role of women seems so often to be overlooked and invisible, particularly when it’s the everyday struggle to keep everyone fed, clean and warm, and with some kind of roof over their heads, even when pushing your belongings in a pram, far from home. 

And so my story began to form, of a woman in the UK experiencing the blitz in London and the fear of invasion in Cornwall, supported by the community of women around her, along with the family of women in France, the grandmother, mother, daughter and her baby, all forced to flee with nothing more than their horse-drawn cart can hold, in a desperate bid for survival, meeting both the worst of human cruelty and the best of human kindness and support along the way. 

In writing it, I found I drew on the way the women of my own family, as well as of my traditional village in Wales, so frequently work together, sorting out and negotiating, using empathy and understanding to keep everyone safe and happy, whatever life throws at us. When I first set out as an author, I had a passion to write about the conventionally heroic women; the overlooked nurses on the front line of WW1, the spies, the scientists, the mountaineers, social reformers, artists and inventors throughout the ages, whose stories have only recently begun to be told. I want to continue doing that, but writing The Last Train from Paris made me realise that I also want to celebrate the invisible, ‘everyday’ heroism of the women who keep things together, with courage and ingenuity, with the ability to read situations and find a way through, and with the sheer strength to survive and carry on. The women who, still unacknowledged, keep the world – and everyday life – running. And, without whom, there would surely be no future. 

Juliet Greenwood

Juliet Greenwood is the author of seven historical novels, her latest being with Storm Publishing. She has long been inspired by the histories of the women in her family, and in particular with how strong-minded and independent women have overcome the limitations imposed on them by the constraints of their time, and also with the way generations of women hold families and communities together in times of crisis, including WW2. 

After graduating in English from Lancaster University and Kings College, London, Juliet worked on a variety of jobs to support her ambition to be a full-time writer. These ranged from running a craft stall at Covent Garden to collecting oral histories of traditional villages before they are lost forever, and more recently as a freelance editor and proof-reader. 

She finally achieved her dream of becoming a published author following a debilitating viral illness, with her first novel being a finalist for The People’s Book Prize and her first two novels reaching #4 and #5 in the UK Kindle store. 

Juliet now lives in a traditional quarryman’s cottage in Snowdonia, North Wales, set between the mountains and the sea, with an overgrown garden (good for insects!) and a surprisingly successful grapevine. She can be found dog walking in all weathers, camera to hand. 

Media links: 

The Last Train from Paris: https://geni.us/290-al-aut-am

Storm: https://stormpublishing.co/

Website: http://www.julietgreenwood.co.uk/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/juliet.greenwood

Twitter: https://twitter.com/julietgreenwood

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The Last Train from Paris

For Iris, each visit to her mother in St Mabon’s Cove, Cornwall has been the same – a serene escape from the city. But today, as she breathes in the salt air on the doorstep of her beloved childhood home, a heavy weight of anticipation settles over her. Iris knows she’s adopted, but any questions about where she came from have always been shut down by her parents, who can’t bear to revisit the past.

Now, Iris can’t stop thinking about what she’s read on the official paperwork: BABY GIRL, FRANCE, 1939 – the year war was declared with Nazi Germany. 

When Iris confronts her mother, she hits the same wall of pain and resistance as whenever she mentions the war. That is, until her mother tearfully hands her an old tin of letters, tucked neatly beside a delicate piece of ivory wool. 

Retreating to the loft, Iris steels herself to at last learn the truth, however painful it might be. But, as she peels back each layer of history before her, a sensation of dread grows inside her. The past is calling, and its secrets are more intricate and tangled than Iris could ever have imagined.

The year is 1939, and in Paris, France a young woman is about to commit a terrible betrayal…  

A beautifully written and addictively compelling historical novel about the terrible choices ordinary people were forced to make in the horrors of World War Two. If you loved The Tattooist of Auschwitz, The Alice Network and The Nightingale, you will devour this book.

 

Tags: featured, women writers

Category: Contemporary Women Writers, On Writing