BENEATH THE POPPY FIELDS by Christopher Chance – 5 Star Review

This story has all the key ingredients for a top box office movie! 

The inspiration behind this story is the life and untimely death of the author’s grandfather Johnny Gordon, and is based upon real events. BENEATH THE POPPY FIELDS is an emotional WW1 journey from Lancashire coal pits to no man’s land. It traces the often bizarre, harrowing and formidable experiences of a group of Lancashire miners turned soldiers, propagandised and recruited for their skills at digging tunnels and setting explosives, then ferried abroad to fight for King and country in a subterranean battle of wits beneath the Somme. 

From his own experiences working underground in compressed air conditions Chance details through his writing the feelings of rabid claustrophobia, tension and abject fear that these men must have felt while working in such onerously cramped, dark, airless conditions, in total silence for fear of their presence being detected – knowing that at any moment, with one false move, they could be blown to smithereens. You feel you are there with those brave British soldiers and in the words of actor Mark Wingett “one can almost smell the cordite”. 

Their friends and families, especially their wives and girlfriends left behind had emotional experiences of their own to contend with. With so few men around to assist them, the women had to become resourceful in more ways than one, even seeking love and sexual pleasure from one another in the absence of male company, a subject rarely touched upon in war stories, but cleverly conceived and empathically portrayed in this novel.

I can highly recommend BENEATH THE POPPY FIELDS and other works by this author notably THE ASSASSINS CODE 1 and SATAN’S ARENA