Fri 2 Jul 2010
A Review by David L. Vineyard: W. F. MORRIS – The Strange Case of Gunner Rawley.
Posted by Steve under Authors , Reviews[7] Comments
W. F. MORRIS – The Strange Case of Gunner Rawley. Dodd Mead & Co., hardcover, 1930. British edition: Geoffrey Bles, hardcover, 1929, as Behind the Lines.
Tankard, the narrator of the opening chapter of this novel, is a soldier in the British army in the First World War.
He recounts a strange encounter, when, while captured by the Germans, he saw his friend Peter Rawley in civilian clothes about to be executed by the Germans in a chalk quarry near Bapaume:
One will say I saw him only for a moment and that it was misty at the time, and that even then I did not recognize the features covered as they were by grime and stubble. I admit all that. The circumstantial evidence is not worth a straw.
Yet I am sure that the taller of the two civilians I saw in the chalk quarry that misty March morning of 1918 was that Lieutenant Peter Rawley, R.F.A., who the official record stated was killed in Arras the previous autumn.
The novel then picks up a year earlier with Peter Rawley before the events at Arras and recounts his own strange story that began with a fellow officer, Rumbald, a charming but reckless fellow of dubious virtue:
Rawley has to give Rumbald his point, but when Rumbald later assaults Rawley during a confrontation at a forward post Rawley accidentally kills him, and panicked, deserts, which saves his life when the forward observation post is blown up by a German shell — convincing everyone that Peter Rawley is dead and Rumbald killed by the shell.
The rest of the novel recounts Rawley’s adventures dressed as a civilian behind enemy lines and his encounter with another deserter, Alf Higgins. Morris proves to be a master at depicting the loneliness of the battle zone and its eerie otherworldly quality.
Rawley’s adventures, and his and Alf’s eventual redemption when the German’s break through the British front, form the rest of the novel ending with Alf and Rawley before a firing squad about to be executed:
Alf’s face was pale under its covering of dirt, and every few seconds he moistened his lips with his tongue.
“I ’ope them blokes ’ave got safety catches,” he whispered hoarsely. “Playin’ about with firearms like that.”
Another shell came whining through the mist: its snoring hum increased rapidly to a savage resonant roar, and it burst on the side of the road with a majestic pillar of spouting earth and vibrant hum of flying metal.
The Strange Case of Gunner Rawley is an entertaining tale with a satisfying resolution, and Morris seemingly had experience in the war which he used to good effect. Though there is no detective interest per se in the book it is clearly marketed as a mystery.
I don’t know anything about W. F. Morris save that in To Catch a Spy, Eric Ambler said of his novel Bretherton that it was one of the best portraits of a spy working behind the lines in wartime. The dust jacket from this one describes a previous novel, G.B. a Story of the Great War, as realistically weird and this one as “… a mystery story from an entirely new angle.”
Morris writes well and underplays the obvious melodrama of his story. with the theme of the loss of identity in the confusion of war dating back to The Odyssey, and well handled here. Rawley is portrayed as a human and likable man who finds himself in circumstances beyond his control and how he extricates himself from his dilemma is a well told story of the confusion of war and a “quaint” tale of wartime adventures.
Note: Though this is a novel of wartime adventure, the Dodd Mead edition is marketed as a mystery, as pointed out above, with ads for books by G.K. Chesterton, Agatha Christie, R. Austin Freeman, John Rhode, and Anthony Gilbert on the back cover; and the book is referred to as a mystery novel in the inside dust wrapper copy. Al Hubin also includes it in Crime Fiction IV.
Editorial Comment: Hubin says this about W. F. Morris, 1893-? Born in Norwich; educated at Cambridge; battalion commander during WWI; was Assistant Master, Priory School. Listed are seven novels published between 1929 and 1939, one marginally. From the titles, several of them also seem to have wartime settings.
[UPDATE] 07-03-10. [1] Earlier today Jamie Sturgeon sent me a link to an article about Morris. Check it out here.
The essay//review is incomplete online, but it’s still very informative, including as it does the year that Morris died, 1969, a small piece of data that I’ll quickly send to Al Hubin for the next installment of his online Addenda to CFIV. Mostly, though, the piece is about Morris’s book Bretherton, and it goes into considerable detail about it.
[2] Thanks to the website that David has steered me to in the Comment he left, I’ve been able to add two covers images to this review he wrote.
July 3rd, 2010 at 3:45 am
Anyone interested should go here http://www.greatwardustjackets.co.uk/ for a look at many dust jackets of books written about the Great War between 1914 and 1939 and to George Simmers Great War Fiction site for more information on the books about the
period http://greatwarfiction.wordpress.com/ .
The former GREAT WAR DUST JACKETS site features covers for Morris’s BRETHERTON and the British edition of BEHIND THE LINES. G.B., which may be the American title of BRETHERTON, and is sub titled THE MYSTERY OF THE SHELLED CHATEAU.
July 3rd, 2010 at 5:57 pm
Thanks, David. As I said in the Update, I’ve already made good use of the first site you sent me to.
I’ve added to the original post two of the cover images I found there.
And, yes, you’re correct in saying that G.B. and BRETHERTON are one and the same.
Check out the link that Jamie Sturgeon sent along. Mostly it’s a good review of this, the first book that Morris wrote.
— Steve
August 6th, 2010 at 12:46 pm
WF Morris (Peter)was my grandfather. His two children (my mother and uncle)are still alive and well, both in thier 80’s.
Despite always having his books on the bookshelf, I have only recently read Bretherton and Behind the Lines. He won a Military Cross but we have no idea what for. He spoke very little about his war experieces but the descriptions of life (and death) in the trenches brought a lump to my throat as I have no doubt most of these were taken personal experience.
Happy to pass on any info about him you may require.
January 16th, 2016 at 2:39 pm
Could Barbara Carter advise when and where W F Morris died, and give any other biographical info on him. Thanks.
January 16th, 2016 at 6:53 pm
I’ve sent your inquiry on to her.
January 16th, 2016 at 6:55 pm
Alas, my message to her came back.
March 13th, 2018 at 11:25 pm
Gunner Rawley: I found it derelict in a used book shop, and have read it about four times since 1978; a pretty good yarn. It is spoiled only by the cloying byplay between Rawley and his sweetie; even for a Brit schoolboy, it is pretty saccharine! Good plot, gritty action (the no-man’s land bullies are terrifyingly brutal, men without countries or scruples!) and somehow Rawley wins through… or is that too Boys Own Paper!? I want to read his others.