Patrick Larsimont is the author of the Jox McNabb Aviation Thrillers, which follow a fighter pilot through World War Two, and The Brookwood Boys, a paranormal thriller with flashbacks to the lives of deceased soldiers.
In my paranormal military thriller, The Brookwood Boys, ‘Mouse’ Forsyth has watched over Brookwood Cemetery since his death in 1917. For a hundred lonely years, he’s been the caretaker of lost souls, greeting the good, the bad, the damaged, the mad and the sad. Then one day, he is seen and can communicate with the living for the first time. He and his band of fellow soldiers from World War One and World War Two work together to help find a missing living girl. But what was the inspiration for this story and the historical flashbacks about the lives and deaths of the soldiers who are buried here?
My setting is Brookwood Military Cemetery in Surrey, England, the largest in the UK, set within what was once the largest cemetery in Western Europe. Created in the Victorian era, it was destined to hold all of London’s relocated dead and cater for future bodies delivered directly from London Waterloo. It never achieved this goal but is the final resting place of over a quarter of a million souls.
My first interactions with Brookwood began during the COVID-19 lockdowns. It was a quiet place where I could walk and not encounter too many people. I’ve always been fascinated by cemeteries, particularly military ones, and the more I visited, the more I realised the countless rows represented characters in a story — their own, but also our collective one. I thought, in a place like this, there must be ghosts, stranded by trauma and suffering. What if they told their story and together resolved something that happened in the living world?
Those familiar with my stories will know I include real people in my fiction, and there are no shortage of fascinating stories to be told in Brookwood: secrets, scandals, tragedies and horror. Many have made it into the novel and here are a few which you may find interesting.
Hedwig ‘Hattie’ Raithel was a thirty-three-year-old American nurse who died of influenza in 1918, at a time when she could have been caring for patients in a war-weary world struck by Spanish flu. This frustration has kept her spirit here in my story, as a gentle, mother-like spirit to the others gathered here. The parallels between the deadly outbreak that led to the crowded graves at Brookwood back then, and the mass fatalities resulting from the current global pandemic were not lost on me.
Pilot Officer John B. Ramsay and Sergeant J. ‘Hugh’ M. Ellis couldn’t have been more different in life. Both were fighter pilots during the Battle of Britain, one a public schoolboy from Dorset, the other nicknamed the ‘Cockney Sparrow’ by his squadron mates. Both were just twenty-one, killed within two weeks of each other during the terrible summer of 1940. Both were lost without a trace. It wasn’t until 1983 that Hugh was found and given a full military funeral at Brookwood, followed by John in 1993. They now lie side by side.
In my story, they become brothers, ‘haunting’ another ghost who might have shot them down. Leutnant Kurt Sidowwas a Luftwaffeace, aged twenty-four, who is also buried at Brookwood with about fifty of his Kameraden. In my story, he is an antagonist, an unrepentant Nazi. But after interacting with John and Hugh, he finds some redemption.
The youngest soldier buried in Brookwood is Tommy Knowles. This is his gravestone on a snowy winter’s day. He too was killed by influenza on the very same day as nine other South African men in the same hospital ward, who never made it to the trenches to do their bit for King and Country. In my story, Tommy plays endless games of football with his friends amongst their gravestones.
There are many other true stories in The Brookwood Boys. What was the fate of the US soldiers killed during rehearsals for D-Day? Who were the US Army’s murderers, and where were they buried after being hanged? Where were the casualties from the Dieppe raid who made it back to Britain buried? Where are the graves of the victims who were killed when the V1 ‘Doodlebug’ landed on the Guards’ Chapel just days after D-Day? And what happened to the countless soldiers of many nations who fought by Britain’s side during the dark days of World War One and World War Two? All are or were at Brookwood. I hope you’ll come and visit.
Image credits:
Image of Hedwig ‘Hattie’ Raithel sourced from Wikimedia Commons (public domain).
All images of graves taken by Patrick Larsimont.
