Robert_Hart

Art imitates life

Added 2022-10-15 23:09:22 +0000 UTC

Big news this week - I am now readying Colette (my WW2 novella) for publication! This means spending time fiddling with layout and it can be terribly frustrating trying to get the details right ... such are the joys of the indie author life.

As part of the release process, I will be looking for Advanced Reviewers. I'll have more to say about this in the next few weeks.

I was tidying up the loose ends from the beta process and final edit, when I came across an interesting moment of 'art imitates life'.

Radio operators like Colette needed to code their messages. The Nazis were always listening, trying to triangulate the transmission and capture the operator but also to break the code and read the messages. For the first part of the war Special Operations Executive agents like Colette used a poem as the basis of the code. I decided that Colette would use a poem by Paul Verlaine (1844-1896) - La Chanson d' Automne. I had studied this when I learned French and fell in love with Verlaine's poetry.

I was online checking the wording of the poem and discovered that the Allies used the opening lines to signal to the French Resistance that the D-Day landings were coming - and to prepare to take the fight to the Nazis - Les Boches - as the French termed them. Coded messages like these were read out after the BBC news. The Nazis made it illegal to listen to the BBC - but it was listened to regularly throughout occupied Europe and proved an exceptionally useful way to start predetermined actions.

After some thought, I've included the poem (in French with a translation) at the end of the novella as part of the Afterword.