Helena Schrader's Historical Fiction

Dr. Helena P. Schrader is the author of 24 historical fiction and non-fiction works and the winner of more than 53 literary accolades. More than 34,000 copies of her books have been sold. For a complete list of her books and awards see: http://helenapschrader.com

For readers tired of clichés and cartoons, award-winning novelist Helena P. Schrader offers nuanced insight into historical events and figures based on sound research and an understanding of human nature. Her complex and engaging characters bring history back to life as a means to better understand ourselves.

Tuesday, April 26, 2022

DISSECTION OF A NOVEL PART II - THE PROTAGONIST

The protagonist of my most recent novel, Moral Fibre, is one of my more powerful characters. By that I don't mean he has a particularly dominant or forceful personality. Only that he has the power to communicate with me more strongly than others. I never intended to write about him. I certainly did not create him. Yet he was able to take over that part of my brain dedicated to writing. He insisted that I tell his story, disrupting all my other plans. Because of him, the release of one book was delayed six months and work on another is only now being resumed. 

I am grateful.

My best books are those in which I draw not only from objective research and employ the technical writing skills developed over decades but where my work is guided by a character with a story to tell. 


The protagonist of Moral Fibre, Kit Moran, was not typical of Bomber Command pilots -- then again, he was typical of the diversity that was so much a part of Bomber Command. Aircrew in Bomber Command came from all the colonies and former colonies, especially Canada and Australia, but including the West Indies, and it came form allied nations such as Poland, France and the United States as well. Kit was British, but his father was in the Colonial Service. He was born and raised in Africa -- South Africa, Kenya, and Nigeria. His parents met in South Africa, where his mother was the daughter of a Scottish missionary and his Zulu second wife. She was, therefore, viewed as "coloured" in South Africa, despite her British passport. Kit grew up in the ambivalent situation of being British, privileged and to all appearances "white" -- but not entirely. 

His anticipated education in the UK was derailed by an accident leading to a financial crisis, and he therefore started his working life as an engineering apprentice in Bristol at the age of sixteen. When the war broke out, he was bored, fractious and impatient to "do" something, so he volunteered for the RAF. The recruiting sergeant looked at his engineering background and suggested he would be mustered faster if he volunteered for ground crew rather than air crew. There were so many young men who wanted to learn to fly, that it would be months before he was called up if he stuck to his original request. So, being in a hurry to leave his seemingly dull job behind, he mustered for ground crew training. After two years as an aircraft mechanic, however, he was restless and dissatisfied with letting others take the risks. He volunteered for air crew and was selected for flight engineer training. 

He served a full tour as a flight engineer, earning first the Distinguished Flying Medal (DFM) and then a commission. After six months as an instructor at an Operational Training Unit (OTU), his former skipper and best friend convinced him to volunteer for a second tour and together they started it. On their sixth operational sortie, however, his skipper was killed and the following day Kit refused to fly with another pilot and crew on another raid against Berlin. In consequence, he was posted for "Lack of Moral Fibre" and sent to a psychiatric diagnostic center to determine if  he had a mental health issue or should be disciplined for cowardice. What happened there is the subject of the novella Lack of Moral Fibre, which is available as a stand-alone ebook or as part of the trilogy Grounded Eagles

Moral Fibre picks up where Lack of Moral Fibre leaves off and takes Kit to the end of his war.

Next week I will explore the heroine: Georgina Reddings:


 


Riding the icy, moonlit sky— They took the war to Hitler. 

Their chances of survival were less than fifty percent. Their average age was 21.

This is the story of just one Lancaster skipper, his crew,and the woman he loved.

It is intended as a tribute to them all. 

Buy or Order Now!

 Flying Officer Kit Moran has earned his pilot’s wings, but the greatest challenges still lie ahead: crewing up and returning to operations. Things aren’t made easier by the fact that while still a flight engineer, he was posted LMF (Lacking in Moral Fibre) for refusing to fly after a raid on Berlin that killed his best friend and skipper. Nor does it help that he is in love with his dead friend’s fiancé, who is not yet ready to become romantically involved again.



 

Tuesday, April 19, 2022

DISSECTION OF A NOVEL PART I: INSPIRATION

As a novelist, I have often been asked how I select the topics I write about -- and, indeed about every other aspect of writing. In response, I will dissect the key aspects of my most recent novel, Moral Fibre, using it as a case study to describe my -- highly individual -- approach to each component.

 I have never been able to write a novel "on command" or "on commission." Nor have I ever been able to embark upon a novel based on a rational analysis of the book market or popular trends.

My novels all come from within me, and they usually start with a flash of inspiration. Many times, a visit to an historical venue has ignited my imagination. Other times, I have stumbled over a character, an event or simply a photograph quite by accident when researching something else. Whatever it is, something triggers an emotional response that transforms itself into the seed of a novel.

I can still vividly remember the moment that the idea for Moral Fibre overtook me. It was a winter evening. I was having a glass of wine in front of the fireplace with my husband. I had been working on a manuscript for a book that paired two novellas. Each novella was too short to stand alone, but related enough to make a pairing possible. I was comfortable with the concept and pleased with what I had produced up to this point. The project was nearing completion and almost ready for the editor. Then abruptly and without any apparent catalyst, I knew that I was wrong and that a story was missing. That the two novellas were not enough, a third was needed, and not just any third story but Kit's story. 

At that moment, I didn't know a lot about Kit. I simply knew that he had been posted for "Lack of Moral Fibre" after refusing to fly on raid to Berlin. So the next day I started researching the phenomenon of "Lack of Moral Fibre" (LMF), why, when and how it was applied.  Simultaneously, I needed to research Bomber Command's offensive against Berlin. Suddenly, I was 100% into research mode, and the more I learned the more fascinated and inspired I became. There was so much material here -- drama, emotion, and meaning. Particularly attractive was the growing realization that popular images and notions were not well-aligned with the evidence presented in solid academic sources and memoirs. My novel, as so often, increasingly took on a educational dimension alongside the purely human interest aspects of the tale.

Initially, I was excited about using the novella format to approach the story in flash-backs. The idea was to start with Kit being declared "LMF" and then slowly, like peeling an onion, reveal to the reader why he had refused to fly on a certain operation in November 1943. The format, being unusual for me, was challenging and got my adrenaline going. I was so pleased with my work, I entered it in "The Page Turner" awards -- and it was long listed! I also had one test reader tell me that it was "the best book" he had read "in years. Period."  I was thrilled and energized.

Meanwhile, since I was doing all this research on Bomber Command anyway, I thought I'd see if I could find a little more about my uncle Ken, who had been lost over Berlin in March 1944. When living in Berlin, I had made a point of leaving a rose on his grave in the Commonwealth War Cemetery at infrequent intervals. I did it for my uncle Jack, who had survived, more than for his elder brother, Ken, who I had never known. 

My haphazard research led me to the squadron association website, and there to a documentary film that had been made a decade ago. It was called "Last Flight to Berlin" and it had been made by a professional film maker, whose father had been a pilot with Bomber Command and been killed when he was only a few months old. He had never known his father and set out to find out more about him with this film. 

Easter Sunday last year (2021) I finally had a copy of that film and settled in to watch it on my laptop at my desk in my office. It told the story of a farm boy from Western Canada, how he volunteered for the RCAF, trained in Canada, fell in love, married. It had pictures of his honeymoon in NYC, and from his years as an instructor in Canada. Then the orders came transferring him to an operational squadron based in England. There he "crewed up" with six other young men. A photograph of seven young men grinning at the camera appeared on the screen. The narrator starting giving the trades and names of each. "The navigator: Ken Heaton." It was like being hit by icy lighting. It was my uncle. Of all the hundreds of crews that had flown with that squadron during the war, the one the film made was about was Uncle Ken's. I couldn't believe it, and it still gives me chills.

But what did this have to do with my novella? The first draft was finished. The editing was on-going. It was without doubt one of my better works. It had already garnered praise. But when I tried to sleep that night, I recognized that the novella was actually only the teaser. The real story was what happened afterwards. And the concept for Moral Fibre was born. 

Next week I will explore the protagonist: Kit Moran.

Riding the icy, moonlit sky— They took the war to Hitler. 

Their chances of survival were less than fifty percent. Their average age was 21.

This is the story of just one Lancaster skipper, his crew,and the woman he loved.

It is intended as a tribute to them all. 

Order Now!

 Flying Officer Kit Moran has earned his pilot’s wings, but the greatest challenges still lie ahead: crewing up and returning to operations. Things aren’t made easier by the fact that while still a flight engineer, he was posted LMF (Lacking in Moral Fibre) for refusing to fly after a raid on Berlin that killed his best friend and skipper. Nor does it help that he is in love with his dead friend’s fiancé, who is not yet ready to become romantically involved again.





 

Friday, April 8, 2022

The Women Who Made the RAF and the Luftwaffe Successful

  The success of an air force is not exclusively attributable to its pilots. As noted last week, ground crews are nearly as important, and command and control probably rates third in the hierarchy of factors contributing to success. Many other factors play a role as well, and both the British and the Germans learned early in WWII that some of the best recruits for the complex and technical tasks associated with support functions in modern air forces were female.


The RAF’s positive attitude towards women was exceptional among the services -- and light years ahead of the USAAF. The RAF actively encouraged the establishment of a Women’s Auxiliary, which by the end of the war served alongside the RAF in virtually all noncombat functions. 

Even before the start of the war, however, the vital and highly technical jobs of radar operator and operations room plotter, as well as various jobs associated with these activities, were identified as trades especially suited to women. The C-in-C of Fighter Commander, ACM Dowding, personally insisted that the talented women who did these jobs move up into supervisory positions – and be commissioned accordingly.

During the Battle of Britain over 17,000 WAAF served with the RAF, nearly 4,500 of them with Fighter Command. A number of WAAF were killed and injured and six airwomen were awarded the Military Medal during the Battle.

Surprisingly, despite Nazi ideology about the place of women being exclusively in the home, the Wehrmacht was also forced to rely increasingly on women auxiliaries. The expansion began after the dramatic victories in the West in May/June 1940 and continued throughout the war. The number of women serving with  the Wehrmacht increased from roughly 35,000 women in uniform in 1941 to over 150,000 when Germany surrendered. General conscription for women, industrial and military, was introduced in Germany after the loss of an entire Army at Stalingrad in early 1943, but the bulk of the women serving in the women’s auxiliary forces before 1945 were volunteers. These women are far too often forgotten entirely in accounts of the Second World War. 


 Women auxiliaries play a significant role in Where Eagles Never Flew.  Find out more here.

 


 

Friday, April 1, 2022

An Air Force is only as good as its Ground Crews

 It was not the pilots alone who won the Battle of Britain. 

The RAF worked hard to ensure that its pilots were supported by some of the best trained ground crews in the world.

With an ‘apprentice’ program, the RAF had attracted technically minded young men early and provided them with extensive training throughout the inter-war years. In some ways, ground crews were better educated than many pilots.

Under the circumstances and given the fact that many pilots came up from the ranks themselves, it is hardly surprising that the relations between pilots and crews were on the whole excellent. The RAF had a notoriously relaxed attitude towards discipline in any case, and this further worked to break down barriers.

Last but not least, at this stage of the war, individual crews looked after individual aircraft and so specific pilots. The ground crews identified strongly with their unit – and ‘their’ pilots. After the bombing of the airfields started in mid-August, the ground crews were themselves under attack, suffering casualties and working under deplorable conditions – often without hot food, dry beds, adequate sleep and no leave. The ground crews never failed their squadrons. Aircraft were turned around – rearmed, re-fuelled, and thoroughly checked – in just minutes.

Where Eagles Never Flew is a tribute to the men and women who were engaged in this crucial conflict. Based on first-hand accounts by pilots and other participants as well as retrospective historical analysis, this novel recreates the tense atmosphere of this dramatic summer. It allows the reader to see unfolding events through the eyes of characters involved both in the air and on the ground and on both sides of the Channel.

Click here to see a video teaser of  Where Eagles Never Flew