Devastation Road

Devastation Road

Jason Hewitt

Language: English

Pages: 384

ISBN: 147112746X

Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub


A deeply compelling and poignant story that, like the novels of Pat Barker or Sebastian Faulks' Birdsong, dramatises the tragic lessons of war, the significance of belonging and of memory - without which we become lost, even to ourselves. Spring, 1945: A man wakes in a field in a country he does not know. Injured and confused, he pulls himself to his feet and starts to walk, and so sets out on an extraordinary journey in search of his home, his past and himself. His name is Owen. A war he has only a vague memory of joining is in its dying days, and as he tries to get back to England he becomes caught up in the flood of refugees pouring through Europe. Among them is a teenage boy, Janek, and together they form an unlikely alliance as they cross battle-worn Germany. When they meet a troubled young woman, tempers flare and scars are revealed as Owen gathers up the shattered pieces of his life. No one is as he remembers, not even himself - how can he truly return home when he hardly recalls what home is?

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7th U-Boat Flotilla: Doenitz's Atlantic Wolves

German Light Cruisers 1939-45 (New Vanguard, Volume 84)

Blood and Ice (The Dogs of War, Book 7)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

At Sagan. It looked to be about thirty-odd miles north. Walking distance. Maybe a day and a half. Janek shook his head but he ran his fingertip up and down a route anyway, pulling a maybe-yes-maybe-no face, before nodding and handing the map back. Perhaps he would walk to Sagan, Owen thought. It was close enough and he was damned whichever way he went. Besides, the name had been niggling at his thoughts all day, the uncomfortable sensation that he knew the name already, and whenever he let his.

Wake. ‘Don’t,’ said Owen, calling him back. ‘Leave him.’ He pushed himself away from the wall and caught his breath, then picked up the dropped pistol and one of the discarded papers. He pushed open one of the shutters so that the light fell in. It looked like a registration form: boxes completed in neatly printed German and attached on the top left-hand corner was a photograph of a man. He was holding up a card that bore the numbers 5792. Owen scanned the form. There were recognizable English.

River. He could hear a lone soldier chasing them and shouting, ‘Halt! Halt, oder ich schieße!’ The trapped man was still shrieking as a shot whistled past, and another, and they heard the clang of a bullet hitting metal. Owen and Janek ran. They let the river take them, the slow current like invisible hands pulling the boat downstream. Around them the rain hissed, hundreds of thousands of droplets spearing the water and splashing up again, every one a heartbeat. There were no oars and they.

Washed up on a raft, carried in on the tide of her breath. How far they had come, he thought, his hand still resting on Janek’s knee as the boy sniffed and quietly gasped through his tears. And yet, how little he knew of them both. He had no idea how many days he and Janek had travelled, this boy who had appeared out of nowhere and had insisted on being with him as if there was something deeper that had threaded them together; something passing between them even now, in the shared warmth of hand.

Came out buttery but like nothing Owen had heard before. ‘Československo.’ ‘Chesko—?’ ‘Československo,’ the boy said. It sounded like Czechoslovakia, but that was ridiculous. Owen stared at the scrap of paper, trying to make sense of the notes he’d written and the pieces of map. ‘Here.’ He held out the paper and pencil. ‘Will you write the date?’ ‘Date?’ said the boy, unsure. ‘The date. Yes. Today. I need to know what the date is. What’s the bloody date?’ ‘Je květen.’ ‘No,’ Owen said,.

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