October | 2020 | Dorinda Balchin

The first casualty when war comes is truth . . . Flanders, June 1917: a British officer and celebrated poet, is shot dead.He is killed not by German fire, but while recuperating from shell shock well behind the lines. A young English soldier is arrested and, although he protests his innocence, charged with his murder. Douglas Kingsley is a conscientious objector, previously a detective with the London police, now imprisoned for his beliefs. He is released and sent to France in order to secure a conviction. Forced to conduct his investigations amidst the hell of The Third Battle of Ypres, Kingsley soon discovers that both the evidence and the witnesses he needs are quite literally disappearing into the mud that surrounds him.

Ben Elton’s tenth novel is a gut-wrenching historical drama which explores some fundamental questions:

What is murder? What is justice in the face of unimaginable daily slaughter? And where is the honour in saving a man from the gallows if he is only to be returned to die in a suicidal battle?

The First Casualty is set during the First World War but this novel is about more than the physical war. Kingsley, the main character, faces the horrors of the Third Battle Of Ypres on the ground – in the trenches, in no-man’s land, and in a hospital for solders suffering from shell shock. But complicating this is the fact that Kingsley is a conscientious objector. He is not a pacifist against all wars but a moral man who can see no point in a war where men are dying in their hundreds of thousands to take a few feet of land which is likely to be taken back by the enemy at any time. He cannot see either side winning, for how can you win when a whole generation of your young men have been slaughtered? Worst of all, he sees the government and the army as murderers – they know what is happening, they know that victory would be hollow but they send men again and again against the artillery and machine-guns and bayonets rather than sue for peace. Kingsley believes that their pride comes before the lives of the men under their care and so he takes a moral stand and refuses to fight.

Kingsley, a police detective, now has to face those who give him a coward’s white feather, he is sent to prison and has to face men who he put there and who do not want to see him leave prison alive; but most harrowing of all for Kingsley is the fact that he must face the future alone for his wife cannot be associated with a coward and has left him, taking his son with her.

Against this backdrop Kingsley is released from prison to find a murderer somewhere amongst the hundreds of thousands of men waiting to go over the top at Ypres, and the conscientious objector finds himself on the front line fighting to survive the war, find the killer and start a new life.

Ben Elton has written a well-researched and cleverly plotted novel which puts the reader right in the midst of the most terrible carnage. The sights and sounds, the atrocious conditions, the heroism and the loss of hope are all laid bare in a clear and concise writing style which leaves little to the imagination, whilst at the same time you are immersed in a murder enquiry with just enough suspects to keep you guessing until the end. The characters are well-drawn and believable which helps to bring a stark reality to this novel – the wife who loves her husband but cannot face the social ostracism that being married to him will bring; the officer whose unpleasant nature has been twisted even further by the horrors that he has experienced and his expectation of an imminent death; the ordinary soldiers who put up with appalling conditions to fight for their country; soldiers who have embraced communism seeing it as the only way to end the war and bring about a just and fair society – all bring something to make this novel the well-rounded polemic that it is.

As a murder mystery The First Casualty is intriguing. As an ethical debate on the evils of war, duty to country, pacifism and conscience it is thought provoking. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I did.

The First Casualty can be found on Amazon

You can find more of my Recommended Reads here

Buried in an unremarkable grave in Hampstead Cemetery is a remarkable man. Few people know of August Agboola Browne who, although born in Nigeria, became a hero of the Polish Resistance during the Second World War. It seems fitting that this courageous man should be remembered during black history month.

August Browne was born in Lagos, Nigeria, on 22^nd July 1895; his father was a longshoreman who brought his family to England in search of work. When the family arrived in England August, who was a musician, joined a touring theatre troupe and travelled with them to Germany and then Poland. The young Nigerian arrived in Warsaw in 1922 and by the 1930’s was well known as a jazz percussionist who played in many of Warsaw’s music clubs and restaurants. August was polite and well-liked, his affinity with languages (he spoke six) meant that he was soon conversant in Polish, married and had two sons. Although the marriage failed August took care of his family and at the outbreak of war sent them to England (this was not too difficult for him to do as he was a citizen of the then British Empire). Although he could have travelled with his family August chose to stay in Poland to fight the Nazis.

August was in his mid-forties when Germany invaded Poland, and after having lived there for 17 years he felt an affinity for the country and its people. He helped to defend Warsaw when it was besieged, then later went on to distribute underground newspapers as well as shelter refugees from the ghetto. The Warsaw ghetto was a section of the city which had been sealed off by the German’s as living space for the Jewish population. Conditions inside the ghetto were terrible with 91,000 people dying from starvation and disease; a further 300,000 Jews were transported from there to their deaths in German concentration camps.

In 1944 there was an Uprising against the German occupiers of Warsaw in which August is believed to have been the only black person to fight. Code-named ‘Ali’, he served as part of the Iwo Battalion of the Polish Underground known as the Armia Krajowa (Home Army). The Uprising began when the Armia Krajowa attacked the occupying forces on 1^st August 1944 and swiftly gained control of much of the city. Germany sent in reinforcements to crush the resistance whilst nearby Soviet troops, who were supposed to be allies of the Poles, sat back and did nothing to help. The Warsaw Uprising was the largest resistance action to take place during the Second World War; the Poles held out for two months without proper equipment or help but the outcome was inevitable and they were forced surrendered on 2^nd October. During the 63 days of the Uprising 16,000 Polish fighters and 200,000 civilians were killed, and the city almost totally destroyed. During those heroic days Polish deaths exceeded those of Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined.

As the only black member of the resistance in Warsaw August must have been conspicuous which put him at greater risk than his companions, yet he managed to survive in a city where 94% of the population were either killed or displaced. After the war Auguste continued to live in Warsaw, where he remarried and continued his music career as well as working in the Department of Culture and Art, before emigrating to Britain in the late 1950’s. Living in London he continued to work as a jazz percussionist and gave piano lessons.

August died in 1976 and is buried in Hampstead cemetery, in what is an unremarkable grave for a very remarkable man.

On August 2nd 2019 a stone was unveiled in his memory in Warsaw: “In honor of Augustine Agboola Browne, nom de guerre “Ali”, a jazz musician and a participant in the Warsaw Uprising of Africa origin. Poland was the country he chose to live in”.