Description
Story Origins:
When I was not yet eighteen years of age, and while in the Royal Navy, I protested against the stupidity of war.
While in port in Singapore, I had been assigned sentry duty to prevent Indonesian insurgents from boarding the ship. Armed with a single-shot .303 rifle, with one round ‘to be kept in [your] pocket until told otherwise,’ I was to guard the quarterdeck of my ship where, if I was attacked, I was to blow a whistle to attract the attention of the Officer of the Watch, who would then tell me what to do next.
‘You are under no circumstances to take action arbitrarily without first consulting me,’ was the given order.
There were reasons, political and legal, for such an order, which at seventeen I did not understand, and I told them how stupid the rule was. When they insisted that ‘is the way it is,’ I refused to do my duty and was thrown into prison as a consequence.
Afterwards, I was sent to a war – Vietnam – where, as one officer put it, ‘the reason we have rules will become clear.’ It was 1966, and the Americans had just landed at Da Nang.
For a time, I was loaned to a multinational observer team. Vietnam was a mess, and nasty with it. The Geneva Conventions existed, but theory and reality did not always occupy the same ground.
Two good things came from that experience. First, it inspired Lieutenant Stephen Lodge RN, the central character in this story. Second, and more importantly, in the years that followed I saw a growing recognition that military personnel placed in danger should be allowed to defend themselves without waiting for permission.
A Stranger in the Village is a work of fiction, but its foundations lie in real experiences. The events are imagined, the characters invented, but the questions at the heart of the story are ones I have carried with me for most of my life.
Only many years later, with the benefit of distance and experience, did I begin writing what would become the Lodge Looks Back series.
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