Field Service by Robert Edric

Field Service Reviews

• 
  Gary Bonn

  Bold and confident.
  I just love it when a writer strikes out into uncharted territory. Edric hasn't ripped up the rule book - just improved it.
  The setting came as a shock, then a wonderful surprise - a brave and successfully lateral move.
  Characters and their interaction are very impressive; combined with the setting, these are the essence of the book.
  Edric's subtle narrative tools are cleverly employed. They will be of interest to students of English and creative writing: some may find them inspirational. I particularly like the evocative, and sometimes charming, last lines of each chapter.
  Editorial input is of a very high standard.
  Take the plunge as Edric did: I can't imagine anyone not liking this book a lot.
• 
  Kim

  Quite enjoyed the story and found it informative in relation to events after The Great War, particularly in relation to the finding, identifying and burying of the bodies of the fallen and the preparation of cemeteries for the dead. Unfortunately, with a lot of promising story lines still 'active', the book suddenly ended. Most disappointing - 7/10.
• 
  Baz

  Couldn't get on with this book. I gave up before the end.
• 
  Stewart

  Robert Edric has almost thirty novels to his name, a couple of which have been long-listed for The Booker Prize, and yet I rarely see much chatter about him or his work. This is the first of his I’ve read, finally deciding to take it off my shelves; it was an unsolicited copy sent by the publisher ten years ago.
  
  Field Service (2012) is an interesting side-step in the more trodden Great War stories; instead of trenches being dug, it’s cemeteries. Set two years after the war, and in northern France, the novel follows the activity of the men left behind to recovery and bury their fallen colleagues.
  
  Chief among them is Captain Reid, war weary but with time still to serve. He’s a man in the middle, commanding many men, but commanded himself by those up the ladder. What’s crucial is that’s he’s boots on the ground; those above are desk jockeys. To him the dead are people with names; to his superiors, numbers.
  
  The story, what there is anyway, sees the winding down of the cemetery, with Reid getting news that preparations are underway for the burial of some nurses. That they are women adds poignancy, but also allows pageantry as the powers intend to use this opportunity to control the narrative back home, far from the reality of mass graves.
  
  What is noticeable about Edric’s approach to historical fiction here is how he captures the period without shoehorning in detail to pad or justify research. There’s no schematic minutiae of machinery; no excruciating period details. He’s rightly focused on his characters, observing their interactions and frustrations. And it’s very much a meditative affair as the action finished in 1918 and all that’s left is to contemplate what just happened and hope - with dramatic irony - that it never happens again.
• 
  David Grieve

  This is a wonderfully simple story of an ordinary man in extraordinary circumstances. Captain James Reid is tasked with the development of a war graves cemetery in northern France, two years after the end of WWI. He has a team of unwilling workers and a Sergeant who understands them better than Reid ever can. Colonel Wheeler, his superior, is a figure of ridicule and is portrayed as being uninterested in anything other than his own advancement.
  
  All the characters are well drawn, both those that Reid likes or has sympathy for and those he doesn't. There are few grey areas in his opinions of people, although, as with everything they are slightly understated.
  
  The story is beautifully written keeping an element of tension surrounding what needs to happen with the cemetery as well as a continuing sense of loss and tragedy. The dialogue has an edgy feel with non sequiturs, half sentences and people finishing each others sentences, wrongly.
  
  All in all a beautifully written book with many of Edric's trademark features. He really does write historical fiction superbly well.
• 
  Roland Marchal

  I thought this book was superb. Having visited the battlefields and cemeteries of N Europe I was spellbound by the detail of how these cemeteries came into being and the personnel involved. This book deals with the creation of a particular cemetery in N France following the 1st World War. It deals with the difficulties of logistics some of which are gruesome but essential and with the rank and file soldier/labourers who jus want to go home and who never envisioned being glorified grave diggers when they joined up. The characters within the book all come together to make a stunning background to a vey human and important part of our history.
• 
  Liz Goodacre

  As a supporter of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission and a regular visitor to Brookwood in Surrey, this find in my library was a gem. A compassionate story of those doing the hard graft of finding, storing, transporting the dead soldiers to the planned cemeteries, the tensions between the military ranks, personal stories and the duty to the bereaved who visit or need solace at home. This was such a well balanced thought provoking novel based on facts, gentle and reassuring and educational too.
• 
  Alexandre

  Un excellent reflet de la réalité post-première guerre mondiale. Cependant, l'histoire ne semble mener nul part...! C'est bien écrit, mais ça manque de contenu.
• 
  ItchyFeetReader

  “We bear that sorry weight. And who knows, it might only get lighter by a solitary ounce every passing year, but we still go on bearing it”

  
  
  This is not a fast paced novel by any stretch of the imagination. However it is one filled with rich characters and strong sense of place. Together these components made for an evocative and moving story of both war and the pain of making the peace that stayed with me after completing the book.
  
  Plot in a Nutshell
  The story opens in 1920 and follows Lieutenant Alexander Lucas, Captain James Reid and their men who have the unenviable task of locating and identifying British war dead and the transfer and burial of those dead in what will become one of many War Grave sites. The story is driven by a number of events. The arrival of 2 women at Morlancourt – one a young woman seeking her fiancé’s grave and the second an older experienced nurse looking to oversee the internment of 24 nurses killed during the war. Against this backdrop we also see Reid and Lucas struggle with being asked to overlook what appears to be the identification of a war crime site and them come to terms with the burial of a young soldier executed for cowardice. The culmination of the story is a ceremony put together for dignitaries and journalists which offers a sharp comparison with the reality of the work being undertaken
  
  Thoughts
  I have been to France and also Belgium to visit a number of the war graves and memorials (French, UK and Commonwealth as well as German) scattered across the landscape and on each visit have found myself very moved. I had never however given a great deal of thought to how they were created and the effort involved. Nor had it occurred to me that like Reid, Lucas and Drake much of this effort would have been undertaken by soldiers not demobbed at the end of the War and as such living in a sort of limbo continuing in France. Edric captures this sense of limbo incredibly well – perhaps because the novel is not fast paced or full of complex plot and story lines but rather focuses predominantly on the ordinary routine of the men with only small every day interruptions.
  Both Reid and Lucas are well drawn and realistic characters. Both have fought during the War before their current postings although it is clear both have been impacted in very different ways. I however particularly enjoyed the interactions between both men and a cast of secondary characters. I found many of Reid and Beniot scenes, the French station master – struggling to come to terms with the death of his son and the changes to his village, particularly moving.
  There is something a little stereotypical in the characterisation of Wheeler, Reid and Lucas’ commanding officer who is shown to be disconnected with the work his men are undertaking heavily political and bureaucratic. Guthrie an army chaplain who appears midway through the story is also cut from the same cloth although both men are used to great effect to create and underline a sense that for our main characters the War is yet to really end.
  Anything but stereotypical is the inclusion of Caroline Mortimer the nursing sister who enters the story awaiting the arrival of the bodies of a number of female nursing casualties. I did not see Caroline as a love interest at all but rather another clever and well researched way to highlight the impact of the War across society where women are not only impacted by their losses at home but also through their more active involvement in theatres of war.
  
• 
  Michael Davies

  A slow moving novel, set in in1920 and centering on the work of the War Graves Commission, responsible for the the recovery, identification and burial of countless corpses from the killing grounds of Northern France. In particular the book follows Captain James Reid, officer in charge at Morlancourt, Departement du Somme as he goes about the melancholy task of receiving and burying the bodies brought in virtually daily by a small, slow moving train from Amiens or Peronne. There is no great storyline in the novel, which deals mainly with the mundane and frequently frustrating minutiae of everyday life for men who almost all would prefer to be back home trying to reintegrate into normal life. Reid himself feels a pawn in a much bigger game as those above him manoeuvre for their own glory and advancement whilst still acknowledging the gravity of the job he is doing. There are hints of a cover - up when a burnt out building unearths a number of corpses with bullet wounds to the back of their heads and a suggestion of a possible love interest with Caroline Mortimer, a former nursing sister come to attend the burial of over 20 nurses killed in various field hospitals, but none of the plot strands are explored in great detail and at the end of the book we are no wiser as to the ultimate fate of any of the main characters. Yet for all that this book rather grew on me. It's very slowness reflected well the sombre and painstaking work involved in identifying and burying bodies years on from the battles in which they fell, and occasional tales of horror and grief almost casually related by the various characters reminds us of what those battles consisted. An absorbing and contemplative read rather than an exciting one, then.
• 
  Dorinda Balchin

  This novel is slow paced with a story which doesn’t seem to go anywhere, yet it is also very illuminating. We all know of the peace and tranquillity of the cemeteries in northern Europe where the dead of the First World War are laid to rest, but the work of the War Graves Commission which was responsible for these is rarely touched on. This novel tells us of the recovery of the bodies, the soldiers who, two years after the war had ended, were still not allowed to return home until their comrades had been laid to rest, the bereaved families who wanted to visit the last resting place of their loved ones, the laying to rest of those executed for cowardice, and the female nurses who never returned home.
  In a way, the slow pace of the book reflects the weariness of the characters, their disappointment at the self-seeking of those in authority, the grief and slow coming to terms with their loss of those who made the pilgrimage to the battlefields. I would recommend this book for anyone who has an interest in the First World War and its aftermath.
  
• 
  Jan

  An interesting look at an overlooked historical niche - the clean up after World War I and the creation of the soldier's cemeteries in France. This novel is quietly contemplative, as suits the subject matter, and we are introduced to some interesting and complex characters. While I don't necessarily like all my loose ends tied up in neat bows, I do like there to a bit more surety about the futures of the characters offered by the author than I got here.
• 
  Andrew McClarnon

  A gentle, muted mood prevails as we lean over the shoulders of Captain Reid as he leads his small troop in the creation of one of the war grave cemetaries. He is tired, and has no time left for the whims and politicking of his commanding officers, a mood he shares with a colleague charged with the even grimmer task of recovering the war dead from the many ad hoc burial sites, doing their best to identify the victims. The events are mirrored by the weather, a perod of lovely summer weather becoming warmer and grittier, until a storm breaks. There is a lovely sense of the time, character and place.