A Time for Peace
A veteran of earlier conflicts with the Turks, Colonel Stefan Petrovic ought to be accustomed to the horrors of war when the Austrian army invades Serbia in August 1914. Ellen Frankland, a middle-class volunteer with the Women’s Medical Corps, has only the haziest idea what to expect when she is deployed to Serbia. But neither of them is prepared for what they will endure when the help promised by the Serbs’ allies fails to materialise and the Serbian army and cadets are forced to evacuate through the Balkan Mountains during the worst winter in living memory.
I was excited by the unusual setting of this novel, having recently read a non-fiction book touching on the subject. But it took me a while to get into the book, and at times I felt distanced from the central characters. However, as the action progressed, I found myself drawn into Ellen’s story in particular. (I’m not sure whether the author is familiar with the story of Flora Sandes, the only British woman known not only to have served in the Serbian army, but to have been decorated and promoted to sergeant major).
Generally I found Stefan’s story less convincing. There seemed to be an abundance of majors, lieutenants and corporals in his regiment and a strange absence of captains, second lieutenants, sergeant majors and sergeants. His headquarters staff seemed to be oddly few in number and he seemed to spend very little time actually commanding his troops.
Occasionally I found myself reaching for my red editing pen, to correct idiosyncratic punctuation or to point out that “dissembling” and “disassembling” are not synonyms. A cast list and a glossary of Serbian terms might have been useful too. A brave attempt at an unusual subject which, for me, didn’t quite come off.
