Truth in fictional tropes

 

Finds from the archives.

When I'm not at work, reading, or out taking photos I also volunteer at the Royal Norfolk Regimental Museum one morning a week and at the moment I'm helping to add items to the catalogue. The curator is learning not to give me too many books or documents to work on as I do end up reading it all and not actually adding the items to the system.

However over the last few weeks I've come across some real gems of items and they do tie into my love of historical fiction.

One of the tropes of fiction set in World War I is that a soldier survives an attack because the bullet hits an item in his pocket. I've certainly seen metal tobacco tins with dents in, and having seen the density of bibles that many soldiers carried I could certainly see one of them saving a life. I was always more skeptical of the books that see a life saved because of letters and/or a photo of a sweetheart being carried in a pocket.

However I now have to mentally apologise to all the authors whose books I've scoffed at as I have held proof that it could have happened.

An item I catalogued recently was a leather wallet which contained a selection of photos from home. The flap on the front of the pouch had a rip/hole in it, as did the front. Then the photos and cards in the pouch all had holes or rips - although these got smaller as I flipped through. Then I turned the pouch over and there was no hole at all - the letters had saved this soldier's life.

Four photos showing the damage to the item (the face of the sweetheart is obscsured)

Reading more information that came with this item it did say that the pouch protected the man from a piece of shrapnel rather than a bullet - which would explain the shape of the tear - and so I don't know if it would have stopped a bullet but some of the plot points in historical fiction no longer seem quite so unlikely.

The second recent find is a an actual book, and as someone who works in a library (and who frequents secondhand bookshops) it was something that was in such poor condition I wondered what was so significant about it that meant it needed saving and not binning...

And again the story that came with the item that revealed the importance

Three images of a very damaged book with rudimentary repairs

This is a copy of Kipling's Stalky & Co. and obviously well loved...in fact this book was owned by a Far East Prisoner of War during WWII. The book obviously didn't like the jungle conditions any more than the men did and the cover and pages are very fragile. 

The book was obviously important to its owner as he repaired it whilst in captivity using what looks like scraps of uniform and threads pulled from who knows where.

When you turn to the back of the book you can see why he was so keen to hold on to the book as he'd used it to record everywhere he'd travelled - either en-route to the Far East or while a prisoner - including the dates. This is fascinating reading as he lists every small movement he made where as so many records just list the big moves/locations men went through.

Diaries weren't encouraged by the Japanese and so keeping hold of his efforts to record everything was even more important, and risky. The more so when looking at the front of the book and seeing Japanese stamps in it - from which I assume that this was a book issued to him in one of the camps from a library or limited relief programme.

Again in fiction you often read of how Prisoners of War recorded their experiences and kept the information hidden and it can read as a bit far fetched but having held this book I will no longer be so skeptical.

I love having my assumptions challenged but so many in such a short space of time lead me to needing the last item I catalogued as it was all sending me mad and I really needed a guide...

A guide to the Deolali Camp - which is where we get the term Doolally from!