conversations.from: human
conversations.value: a description for a book titled Fields of Glory about Chairman, Crime, Writers with the genre: Literature & Fiction, Genre Fiction
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: the author gave up a career in the computer industry to concentrate on writing and the study of medieval history. A regular speaker at library and literary events, he is a past Chairman of the Crime Writers' Association. He lives with his wife, children, and dogs in northern Dartmoor.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: the first four paragraphs for this book
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Fields of Glory
  Between these two limits, on this dotted line, Aunt Marie, in time-diluted violet ink, sets down the mystery to be elucidated concerning a life that has ended. Age twenty-one. We know, since she taught us as much, that La Pérouse commanded a frigate at the age of fourteen, so that seven years later he undoubtedly had the memories of an old sea dog. Joseph, on the other hand, who left his native village to die, saw only a devastated landscape and, on his travels, only the sordid anonymity of cattle cars and an ambulance tarpaulin above his damaged eyes. Joseph, who may never have known pleasure with a woman, Joseph catapulted into a human hell. Joseph, too young for this major act, "Joseph," as she wrote, "died May 26, 1916."
  A year later it was Emile's turn. That difference of one year would separate the two brothers on the war memorial's interminable list: Joseph in the 1916, Emile in the 1917 column. Thus exiled from each other, a curious visitor, struck by their homonymy, might have mistaken them for mere cousins — whereas their two names in the same column would have united them in death, giving rise to a vision of two brothers fallen side by side, swept away by the same explosion, forever twinned by memory. Marie shared her grief over this second death, for which she had only her tears to give, with Mathilde, Emile's young widow and the mother of little Rémi, whom his father discovered during a short leave granted him for the birth. Entering the room in uniform at nightfall, he tiptoes over to the cradle and bends down cautiously, for fear of disturbing the little sleeping creature with the turmoil of the war. Suddenly Emile is struck dumb with joy by those tiny fists clenched over pleasant dreams, the fine-spun hair, the delicately hemmed line of the closed eyes, the transparent network of the veins, the indescribable freshness of the child's breath on his bruised hand. Lifting the muslin netting, Mathilde presents her creation to her great man. For that is how she sees him in his bedraggled uniform, which smells of sweat, dust, and the misery of war. In his hardened features, the unfamiliar creases around his mouth and on his forehead, she reads the harshness of his life out there and his unflagging inner courage. To him, whose whole existence is one of privation, she doesn't dare speak of her privations here at home, of the rough man's jobs she has to do, the decisions she has to take alone, of her fatigue, of this last joyless Christmas without him, of the little creche which, in spite of everything, she set up on the chest of drawers, with its wrapping paper that was supposed to look like a mountain and transformed that little corner of Palestine into a Paleolithic cave. She feels full of gratitude and compassion. Resting her hand on the back of his neck, she tells him how cruelly she has missed their tenderness, while he, raising his head from the cradle, feels the soft perfume of this powdered woman going to his head. She has waited so long she cannot be sure that this is the man for whom she has been yearning desperately. Looking at him now as he stands beside her, she wonders if she didn't overestimate his size when, hugging herself in a sham embrace, she tried, for the sweater she was knitting, to conjure up her husband's torso, with this resting place for her head, this specially designed hollow in his shoulder, which she now tries to find with her forehead. Meanwhile, he is pulling out her hairpins one by one with the skill of a hunter of lice, putting them down on the bedside table, where she will be able to find them when dressing in the morning, after he has handed her the baby, who has woken up crying. Set down on his mother, he starts sucking avidly, milky tears flowing from his mouth. Once the child is sated, his father lifts him up at arm's length in the pale light of day, at the risk of a white flood that will soil the blue uniform laid out on the chair. But Emile doesn't let that worry him. He feels miraculously invulnerable for the battles to come, as sure as an Indian ghost dancer of passing through the gunfire, fortified by the memory of this victorious child born on December 2, the anniversary of the battle of Austerlitz and of Napoleon's Coronation, a sign of nobody knew exactly what, but which Rémi never failed to mention on his birthday, sprinkling himself meanwhile with a little Imperial Mist. Thus the last kiss Emile gave his son before returning to the front to die became confused with the Fontainebleau farewells in a room papered with heraldic bees.
  Emile wasn't present at his funeral For years Mathilde mourned beside an empty grave. Her husband was definitely dead, his body had been identified, but at the end the fighting was so fierce that the truce necessary for the stretcher bearers to do their job was no longer respected. Every major offensive was preceded by an artillery bombardment that was likely to last for as much as eight days, during which enough explosives to wipe an entire country off the map would descend on the area to be softened up. The poor soldiers, burrowed deep in the ground, deafened by the din, unable to stretch out an arm to grab a water bottle, went hungry for days before the arrival of a field kitchen (those unarmed heroes who precariously hauled enormous cauldrons and sacks full of bread through the communications trenches), sleeping watchfully in a hole in the ground, certain that the whole world to the very end would consist of nothing but this concentrated horror. Little by little, abandoned corpses sank into the clay, slid to the bottom of a hollow, and were soon buried under a wall of earth. During an attack you stumbled over a half-exposed arm or leg. Falling face to face on a corpse, you swore between your teeth — yours or the corpse's. Nasty the way these sneaky corpses would trip you up. But you took the opportunity to tear their identification tags off their necks so as to save those anonymous lumps of flesh from a future without memory, to restore them to official existence, as though the tragedy of the unknown soldier were to have lost not so much his life as his name. This no doubt was how Mathilde came to be notified that Emile was dead and that his body lay somewhere in the Hauts-de-Meuse sector. But what if Emile had lost his identification tag and someone else had picked it up? What if he had exchanged tags with a buddy to further some secret plan or to confuse an obtuse corporal? Could Emile really be dead?
  Prisoners returning from the ends of the earth, sometimes years after the war, kept hope alive. There were stories about amnesiacs, real or feigned, who had begun a new life somewhere in the East. In the blue eyes of a Polish woman a penniless farmhand had found the few acres of land that were not his in France. To the indigent, France was less grateful than a lonely woman in need of strong arms. Hungry soldiers, wandering about, were said to have been rescued by enterprising matchmakers. A thick sandwich and a little warmth were sometimes enough to blunt the homesickness of these tragedians in spite of themselves. But why should Emile have gone elsewhere to look for what he had here at home?
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: five more paragraphs
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Emile wasn't present at his funeral For years Mathilde mourned beside an empty grave. Her husband was definitely dead, his body had been identified, but at the end the fighting was so fierce that the truce necessary for the stretcher bearers to do their job was no longer respected. Every major offensive was preceded by an artillery bombardment that was likely to last for as much as eight days, during which enough explosives to wipe an entire country off the map would descend on the area to be softened up. The poor soldiers, burrowed deep in the ground, deafened by the din, unable to stretch out an arm to grab a water bottle, went hungry for days before the arrival of a field kitchen (those unarmed heroes who precariously hauled enormous cauldrons and sacks full of bread through the communications trenches), sleeping watchfully in a hole in the ground, certain that the whole world to the very end would consist of nothing but this concentrated horror. Little by little, abandoned corpses sank into the clay, slid to the bottom of a hollow, and were soon buried under a wall of earth. During an attack you stumbled over a half-exposed arm or leg. Falling face to face on a corpse, you swore between your teeth — yours or the corpse's. Nasty the way these sneaky corpses would trip you up. But you took the opportunity to tear their identification tags off their necks so as to save those anonymous lumps of flesh from a future without memory, to restore them to official existence, as though the tragedy of the unknown soldier were to have lost not so much his life as his name. This no doubt was how Mathilde came to be notified that Emile was dead and that his body lay somewhere in the Hauts-de-Meuse sector. But what if Emile had lost his identification tag and someone else had picked it up? What if he had exchanged tags with a buddy to further some secret plan or to confuse an obtuse corporal? Could Emile really be dead?
  Prisoners returning from the ends of the earth, sometimes years after the war, kept hope alive. There were stories about amnesiacs, real or feigned, who had begun a new life somewhere in the East. In the blue eyes of a Polish woman a penniless farmhand had found the few acres of land that were not his in France. To the indigent, France was less grateful than a lonely woman in need of strong arms. Hungry soldiers, wandering about, were said to have been rescued by enterprising matchmakers. A thick sandwich and a little warmth were sometimes enough to blunt the homesickness of these tragedians in spite of themselves. But why should Emile have gone elsewhere to look for what he had here at home?
  Mathilde's forlorn hope faded with the passing years. For a time she found comfort in religion, not as her sister-in-law would have wished, but in her own, more temporal way, namely, friendship with an attractive priest. It would be going too far to think of furtive embraces. At the most they found pleasure in conversation, in embroidering together on the theme of their common loneliness — affectionate banter that, like serene love, is sufficient unto itself. After all, the Nazarene, too, was a handsome man; it was women who defied the Sanhedrin and the law of Rome and as a reward for their fidelity were the first to witness the Resurrection. Paul of Tarsus wrote splendid letters that are admired by all, but when the stammering midget turned up in Ephesus or Corinth nobody wanted to listen to him. Heaven had endowed Mathilde's priest with the face of an angel, which he made use of to bring stray sheep back to the fold. As a laborer of the first hour, Marie looked upon her erring sisters with Jacobin ferocity and took it out on Mathilde's petunias,
  It took the letter from Commercy ten years to reach us. For Mathilde that letter marked the end of her youth, the moment of abdication when, though she might still allow herself to dream, she ceased to imagine that her dream could someday come true. Once the formulas of condolence reach us, we realize that none of the things we were hoping for will ever happen, that there will be no miracle, no sloe-eyed Polish woman getting her hooks into a chivalrous young Frenchman, no temporary amnesia — that Emile is really and truly dead. His buddy has written simply that he buried Emile in a makeshift grave at the foot of a eucalyptus tree and would be able to locate him if the family were interested in recovering the body; this seemed to have been his dying friend's desire and was the reason he himself had hidden the body — to avoid a mass burial or slow decomposition on the battlefield. After the first few lines Mathilde's eyes cloud over, her eyelids twitch, and tear after tear drops on the paper. Not that the letter was telling her anything new; she had known for twelve years that Emile was dead; what dismayed her was the finality of it, the end of her waiting, the door that had closed. She tots up the hours of happiness experienced in her lost youth, and the balance is so poor, so pathetic; so much grief for so little profit.
  Tall and wide, with a cloche pulled down over her ears, Aline is standing beside the door. She has buried her face in her little fox fur piece, which conceals her nose. There is a certain elegance in her fitted coat. To fight the cold wind that ruffles her fur, she rubs one leg against the other, with the result that when the shutter clicks she is balanced on one toe in defiance of the laws of gravity. She looks sad, worried, disapproving, in contrast to Pierre with his childlike delight in his spiffy vehicle. She knows nothing can stop him — and in that respect Joseph takes after his father. But the son is absent from the picture. Maybe it was he who held the camera.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: the last two paragraphs
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: A year later, again at All Saints', the young man is alone beside the granite tomb. Leon Blum's double didn't lose any time, thinks Grandfather, amazed at the man's haste to join his wife. Years later, Grandfather would try to fathom the secret. He had collected the evidence in a shoe box: letters, photos, maps of the front, and the diary of Pierre's trip to Commercy, that long confession of a husband to the woman he had never left except during the war years, as though the real purpose of his journey had been to get far enough away from her to resume the tender correspondence of the terrible years, to confess to her what can only be confessed without confusion in writing, to recapture the fresh emotion that comes of absence, to pile up distance so as to rush back to her with new impetus. Secluded in his attic. Grandfather digs up fossile traces of that attachment. Time and again he turns over the photo of Pierre at the front, in puttees and sky-blue uniform; his jacket stiff with dirt, he holds his rifle by the barrel with the stock to the ground; the lenses of his glasses are almost opaque, his helmet on a slight slant that gives him an almost dandified look but may have been produced by a push from a buddy. Behind him, hanging from a peg driven into the trench wall, a canteen and a grenade bag, and, in a little chapel-like recess he has rigged up, a small Blessed Virgin — one suspects the hand of his sister Marie. In preparation for having his picture taken, he has deposited his pipe on an improvised bench. From its bowl rises a thin fillet of smoke, a signal unlikely to tell the enemy trench very much. Actually, they too are smoking, writing to their families, cursing the general staff, whose ruthless orders will soon fling them into more misery and mud. The trench wall is barely higher than he is. If he doesn't stick his nose out, he has nothing to fear from snipers. He measures five foot seven and, according to his service record, which has also found its way into the shoe box, has russet eyes. Russet? Seen through eyes of that color. Grandfather reflects, all wives must have that lovely, copper complexion that he himself was looking for on the naked bodies of the women on the Ile du Levant. Pierre smiles from the pit of horror. That is the best news he can give. The addressee of that happiness is identified on the back of the photo: "To her whom I love so dearly." Grandfather turns the picture over and over, as though hoping to discover the mysterious bridge between front and back, between the tragic scene and the words of tenderness, as though the compound of love and death attested by the proximity of the dates on the granite tombstone were contained in the thickness of the card.
  At the moment he sees the tall young man in mourning bent over the grave of his parents, the curve of his back coinciding with the curve of the cypress trees bent under the brisk November wind. He seems to be hesitating whether to lie down between them in the still-warm place of the miraculous child he was, as though already preparing to answer "Present" at the next roll call. His tall silhouette freezes in uncertainty between the crosses. The strength that has carried him thus far seems to have deserted him. Not yet twenty, an orphan, virtually penniless, war all around him — who would venture to choose for him? Little by little, the mourners leave the cemetery. Alone with the call of his entombed loved ones, insensible to the awkwardly affectionate tugs at his shoulders and to murmurs of encouragement, most of which, in view of the vanity of words, amount to no more than the repetition of his name. Aunt Marie comes up behind him, takes hold of his coat, pulls, persists, and finally prevails. All right, he'll keep trying. Accompanied by that stubborn strength, he makes his way up the central path — if only he were dead!
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: the first three paragraphs for this book
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Fields of Glory
  Sir John eyed the girl. She was a sullen-looking mare, he thought, with her down-drawn mouth and dark eyes, but if she kept the vintaine happy, he was content. 'Very well – but make sure she doesn't cause any arguments. We both know how women can sow dissent.' As he spoke, he caught a glimpse of Geoff's expression. The fellow was watching the woman with a mistrustful expression.
  His words distracted Sir John. 'You? By Christ's pain, man, you'd crush the poor maid,' the elderly knight chuckled. 'Your belly is vast as a tun of wine, man. That would be a cruel way to kill her!'
  Sir John rose to his feet and watched as Berenger darted over to the sentries. They pointed, and Berenger peered into the distance with fierce concentration.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: five more paragraphs
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: He paused while the men were prodded and beaten into their new lines, and then the foot-soldiers marched down between the two lines and separated them.
  When the men had all been marched back to the army, he had thought that there would be a court, an opportunity to explain – and yet here he was, with the sentence of death on him!
  He looked about him frantically as he realised the full awfulness of his situation. When they were forced into a line, he had shuffled between Gil and Walt. There, with their two solid forms before and behind, he had felt safe. It was like standing between the walls of an fortress. He was out of sight – and that meant he was out of mind.
  And then he heard the King's judgement, and suddenly his confidence was stripped away as he realised his danger. Men came marching down the line, pulling a man to the left, then to the right, and as they came closer and closer, Ed saw that Gil, in front of him, and Walt behind, would both be pulled out to one side, leaving him on the other.
  He wanted to ask to be allowed to stay with his friends, but the man tugged him away, and he found himself on one side of a polearm held across a guard's chest, while beyond he could see Gil and Walt. The polearm was one of many forming an impenetrable fence, and the look in the guard's face told Ed that any pleading would be useless.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: the last four paragraphs
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Archibald stood bawling at some men to clear a path about his gonnes so that he could bring his wagon up to replenish his stores of powder and shot, but while guards and others tried to explain that the King wished for all the army to stand on the ground, Archibald could hear nothing said to him. His ears were ringing as though inside a church bell while the clapper struck.
  He had never seen so many bodies in one place. He saw one knight still sitting in his saddle on top of a second horse and rider. All four were pricked with a profusion of arrows. The stench of death was overpowering.
  This, then, was the path he had chosen. To live and to die in dealing death. Berenger was transfixed, overwhelmed by the thought that so many souls could be snuffed out in a single afternoon.
  He lowered the skin and passed it to Berenger. 'Sup this, Vintener,' he said, his mood sombre now. 'And in the future, when all the churls in a tavern are falling over themselves to buy you a drink to celebrate this glory, be grateful that you will never again have to see butchery on this scale. Never, ever again. Christ Jesus, I swear that the French King must accept our King's right! If ever God gave proof of His support, it was today. I doubt we'll ever see a victory like this again in our lifetimes.'
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Reverse the sentences.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: '. I doubt we'll ever see a victory like this again in our lifetimes. Christ Jesus, I swear that the French King must accept our King's right! If ever God gave proof of His support, it was today. Never, ever again. 'And in the future, when all the churls in a tavern are falling over themselves to buy you a drink to celebrate this glory, be grateful that you will never again have to see butchery on this scale. 'Sup this, Vintener,' he said, his mood sombre now.
  He lowered the skin and passed it to Berenger. Berenger was transfixed, overwhelmed by the thought that so many souls could be snuffed out in a single afternoon. To live and to die in dealing death.
  This, then, was the path he had chosen. The stench of death was overpowering. All four were pricked with a profusion of arrows. He saw one knight still sitting in his saddle on top of a second horse and rider.
  He had never seen so many bodies in one place. His ears were ringing as though inside a church bell while the clapper struck.Archibald stood bawling at some men to clear a path about his gonnes so that he could bring his wagon up to replenish his stores of powder and shot, but while guards and others tried to explain that the King wished for all the army to stand on the ground, Archibald could hear nothing said to him