The Wooden Horse, by Eric Williams
Mar. 31st, 2012 11:39 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kindkitThe Wooden Horse is a 1949 novel by Eric Williams which I read as part of my current obsession with POW stories and WWI/WWII stories in general. It's a very lightly fictionalized revision of Williams's earlier memoir about his escape from Stalag Luft III (where the mass breakout known as "the great escape" later took place).
As is often the case with POW narratives, truth is a good deal stranger than pure fiction would ever dare to be. Williams and two companions escaped by tunnelling, but in order to make faster progress and lessen the chances of being caught, they wanted to start the tunnel as close as possible to the wire. So they came up with the Trojan Horse-inspired idea of building a vaulting horse, hollow inside, in which a man could hide and work on the tunnel while other prisoners vaulted. The tunnel opening was disguised with boards and a layer of dirt.
Astonishingly, it worked, and the three men escaped in October 1943. They split up, with Williams and his friend Michael Codner taking one route and Oliver Philpot taking another, but they all managed to get to Sweden and were reunited there before returning to England.
As far as I know, the novel fictionalizes very little but the names: Eric Williams becomes "Peter," Michael Codner is "John," and Oliver Philpot is "Phil." The first half describes coming up with the plan and digging the tunnel, the second half focuses on Peter and John's escape to the German port of Stettin, where they find passage to Denmark and then to Sweden.
I got my copy of the book from Paperback Swap, and unfortunately I didn't realize that I was getting the "special edition for teen-agers." I assume there's some bowdlerization, perhaps some simplification of language and so on, but what's left is still really interesting and I wanted to talk about it. I'm hoping to get a copy of the real book soon and compare the two.
The first half is my favorite, because I'm fascinated by the details of POW life, from ordinary tasks like cooking (fourteen mess groups of eight men apiece, and one stove; the problem of making one loaf of bread serve eight men for three meals) and washing (six cold water taps for all the prisoners' bathing, laundry, and cooking) to recreation (one of the characters is producing a play and frets about finding someone to play the female lead) and mental/psychological survival tactics (one character has an imaginary farm and is upset when it rains during his imagnary harvest, another devises elaborate practical jokes to play on John).
The second half of the book, after Peter and John escape from the camp, reflects what Peter comes to think of as the definitive experience of escaping:
The book also appeals to my interests, and perhaps yours, by being quite homoerotic. I'm not sure if that's an unintended consequence of this being the teenage edition (sexual references to women might have been removed) or if the proper book is even more homoerotic. In any case, the relationship between Peter and John is very close and tender even when their fear and frustration leads them to quarrel a lot, as they do during the escape. There are also about a million scenes (well, okay, four or five) where Peter looks at or draws John and thus is able to tell us all about John's youthful good looks. John is "a lean brown figure with a mop of black hair like an Abyssinian warrior." (Despite what that description might seem to imply, John is an olive-skinned white man, not a black man; faily exoticizing racial metaphor is faily.) Peter does a drawing of John, which is described like this:
I don't think it's doing any violence to the text to conclude that Peter is in love with John. Nor is Peter necessarily the only one. Nigel, John's bunkmate in the camp and the man I mentioned above as playing practical jokes on John, does so to disguise/express other feelings:
The Wooden Horse also includes a lot of classic slash/homoerotic tropes, including "cling together for warmth" and "hotel room with only one bed." When they're staying in the hotel, Peter and John have a lot of conversations in bed and long lie-ins together (in part because they're afraid to go out too much in the daytime, but still).
The Wooden Horse was made into a film in 1950, which is not as homoerotic or as nuanced but still worth a look. (Alas, it seems to have disappeared from the Tube of You.) And Eric Williams later wrote a prequel, also autobiographical, about Peter and John's life in the POW camp before their escape. I haven't read it yet but you can imagine how badly I want to.
It's inevitable to compare The Wooden Horse to The Cage. I'd say The Cage is better in a lot of ways: it's less sanitized (The Wooden Horse doesn't mention bedbugs, lice, or rooting around for discarded moldy cabbage stalks to eat when the rations run low), more literary, and more open (if also more Freudian and problematic) about its homoeroticism. But The Wooden Horse's great strenght is a certain naiveté, or at least an impression of naiveté. It doesn't feel filtered in any way, or interpreted to fit a theory (as Alan's love for David is heavily interpreted through pop-psychoanalysis in The Cage). It just is what it is, without explanation or excuse, and I do find something admirable in that.
As is often the case with POW narratives, truth is a good deal stranger than pure fiction would ever dare to be. Williams and two companions escaped by tunnelling, but in order to make faster progress and lessen the chances of being caught, they wanted to start the tunnel as close as possible to the wire. So they came up with the Trojan Horse-inspired idea of building a vaulting horse, hollow inside, in which a man could hide and work on the tunnel while other prisoners vaulted. The tunnel opening was disguised with boards and a layer of dirt.
Astonishingly, it worked, and the three men escaped in October 1943. They split up, with Williams and his friend Michael Codner taking one route and Oliver Philpot taking another, but they all managed to get to Sweden and were reunited there before returning to England.
As far as I know, the novel fictionalizes very little but the names: Eric Williams becomes "Peter," Michael Codner is "John," and Oliver Philpot is "Phil." The first half describes coming up with the plan and digging the tunnel, the second half focuses on Peter and John's escape to the German port of Stettin, where they find passage to Denmark and then to Sweden.
I got my copy of the book from Paperback Swap, and unfortunately I didn't realize that I was getting the "special edition for teen-agers." I assume there's some bowdlerization, perhaps some simplification of language and so on, but what's left is still really interesting and I wanted to talk about it. I'm hoping to get a copy of the real book soon and compare the two.
The first half is my favorite, because I'm fascinated by the details of POW life, from ordinary tasks like cooking (fourteen mess groups of eight men apiece, and one stove; the problem of making one loaf of bread serve eight men for three meals) and washing (six cold water taps for all the prisoners' bathing, laundry, and cooking) to recreation (one of the characters is producing a play and frets about finding someone to play the female lead) and mental/psychological survival tactics (one character has an imaginary farm and is upset when it rains during his imagnary harvest, another devises elaborate practical jokes to play on John).
The second half of the book, after Peter and John escape from the camp, reflects what Peter comes to think of as the definitive experience of escaping:
Escape is all coldness, Peter thought. Coldness and waiting. It's heat sometimes in digging and running away. But mostly it's coldness and hunger and hanging about waiting.It's a completely unglamorous story and it turns noticeably bitter at the end, when Peter and John arrive in England and are treated with enormous callousness by the intelligence officer who debriefs them.
The book also appeals to my interests, and perhaps yours, by being quite homoerotic. I'm not sure if that's an unintended consequence of this being the teenage edition (sexual references to women might have been removed) or if the proper book is even more homoerotic. In any case, the relationship between Peter and John is very close and tender even when their fear and frustration leads them to quarrel a lot, as they do during the escape. There are also about a million scenes (well, okay, four or five) where Peter looks at or draws John and thus is able to tell us all about John's youthful good looks. John is "a lean brown figure with a mop of black hair like an Abyssinian warrior." (Despite what that description might seem to imply, John is an olive-skinned white man, not a black man; faily exoticizing racial metaphor is faily.) Peter does a drawing of John, which is described like this:
The face was in repose. Dark-skinned, with large brown eyes and heavily marked eyebrows, it was at once sensitive and mischievous. There was something faun-like in the setting of the ears and the long black hair. The subject looked as though he were about to speak. He looked as though what he was about to say would be of interest.Later, having escaped, they take the risk of checking into a hotel in order to rest and have a wash and shave. Peter watches John washing (the text specifies that Peter is watching, as opposed to happening to see John out of the corner of his eye) and we get this description: "John was standing on his towel furiously scrubbing at his legs. He looked very young standing there, thin and young and graceful against a background of floral wallpaper." And one last example. They're on the Danish ship and have spent the night sick and miserable due to rough weather. Peter wakes and looks at John: "John lay sleeping with his head on his arm, his long lashes dark over his cheeks and a slight smile on his unshaven face."
I don't think it's doing any violence to the text to conclude that Peter is in love with John. Nor is Peter necessarily the only one. Nigel, John's bunkmate in the camp and the man I mentioned above as playing practical jokes on John, does so to disguise/express other feelings:
Nigel treated John with a teasing respect. Respecting him for his fine intelligence and ready courage; teasing him because of his youth and absent-mindedness. John's mind was always on his books or schemes of escape. So far removed from his environment that Nigel often had to go and find him and bring him to his meals. Nigel loved John and masked his affection under a veil of chaffing and elaborate practical jokes. He called him 'the child' and respected him above everyone.On the day of the escape, Nigel gives Peter a bottle of cold tea to bring to John (who's been in the tunnel for several hours, completing the digging) and says, "Give him [John] my love and tell him to write." Nigel's feelings may well be brotherly or quasi-paternal, or they may be romantic, or they may, as I'm inclined to read them, be some complex combination. (I'd also note that in the passage about John's various excellent characteristics that Nigel loves, we're still in Peter's POV and we're learning as much about what Peter thinks of John as what Nigel does.) Incidentally, Nigel also has an intriguing little autoerotic quirk.
Nigel lay on his back in the upper bunk [in the morning before appel] his right arm curled round the top of his head. His right hand was gently stroking the left-hand side of his mustache. His expression was blissful.
Peter stood watching him. Nigel winked.
"Why do you keep doing that?" Peter asked.
"I like it, old boy. Feels as though someone else is doing it."
The Wooden Horse also includes a lot of classic slash/homoerotic tropes, including "cling together for warmth" and "hotel room with only one bed." When they're staying in the hotel, Peter and John have a lot of conversations in bed and long lie-ins together (in part because they're afraid to go out too much in the daytime, but still).
The Wooden Horse was made into a film in 1950, which is not as homoerotic or as nuanced but still worth a look. (Alas, it seems to have disappeared from the Tube of You.) And Eric Williams later wrote a prequel, also autobiographical, about Peter and John's life in the POW camp before their escape. I haven't read it yet but you can imagine how badly I want to.
It's inevitable to compare The Wooden Horse to The Cage. I'd say The Cage is better in a lot of ways: it's less sanitized (The Wooden Horse doesn't mention bedbugs, lice, or rooting around for discarded moldy cabbage stalks to eat when the rations run low), more literary, and more open (if also more Freudian and problematic) about its homoeroticism. But The Wooden Horse's great strenght is a certain naiveté, or at least an impression of naiveté. It doesn't feel filtered in any way, or interpreted to fit a theory (as Alan's love for David is heavily interpreted through pop-psychoanalysis in The Cage). It just is what it is, without explanation or excuse, and I do find something admirable in that.
