Before I wrote The Displaced, I researched and co-authored Outcast Europe, a historical study of refugees and relief-workers in the Second World War. For all sorts of reasons, I couldn’t simply cut-and-paste paragraphs from the historical study into the novel. However, my previous research gave me a solid base from which to start: I knew the context, I knew UNRRA, I just had to find the characters.
The Displaced is largely accurate, even if some elements might well strike the twenty-first-century reader as absolutely extraordinary. In some places, I’ve exaggerated, I’ve darkened the shade and intensified the light, for effect and to drive home a point. My final word would be that some elements of The Displaced are implausible, but nothing is impossible.
Spoiler alert: within The Displaced there are several surprises for the reader. If you continue reading this commentary, you’ll learn some of them.
Let’s start with a general observation: people often correctly talk of the Second World War as a time of strict rules and regulations. Certainly, there were increased state controls and social pressures on individuals. But observations about government and laws during the war often forget one simple point: the war was a mess. On p. 46 Edmund observes that Fire Service regulations were tightened up in an effort to improve the general levels of fitness and health among the volunteers, but many obviously unfit men remain in the Service. I think this observation is probably entirely correct, and this type of qualification can be made about many wartime regulations.
Edmund is drawn from a number of real, solid contemporary sources from the 1940s. However odd he seems, I’m confident that he’s a recognisable type of 1940s man: not the much-loved square-jawed hero of war dramas, but nonetheless capable of moments of courage and—more importantly—guided by an innate sense of decency. Eleanor is more genuinely exceptional. But we’re so used to dramatic romantic females, that readers usually seem to forget this and, as yet, no one has complained that she’s unbelievable.
One central theme to The Displaced is the attraction of UNRRA. To simplify, there were four main reasons why people joined UNRRA.
- (often for men) Some sense of shame for not having a heroic war record. This could apply to men who’d worked in offices during the war, for Conscientious Objectors, Quakers and men like Edmund who were categorised as invalid for service.
- (often for women) UNRRA could look like a useful step for women considering a career in social work. The UN was a prestigious and respected organisation in 1945 and years afterwards: the idea of working on such a vital international project attracted many.
3. Money. It’s best not to be too cynical here. Many people were ruined by the war. The idea of doing 12 or 18 months of well-paid work to recover financially made sense.
4. Idealism. UNRRA was—briefly—the focus point of some intense idealism about the reconstruction of the world. True, at times that idealism could work in different ways: in The Displaced, Victor’s idealism is clearly different from the principles that drive Edmund and Eleanor. But many responded warmly and positively to the promise of working in small teams of young, highly motivated, well-meaning people seeking to repair the world. The scene at the end of Chapter 7 (In Search of UNRRA) probably captures this.
Evacuation from London (chapter 2). While there were prominent and important state-organised schemes of evacuation, many people—like Edmund, Eleanor and Muriel—just upped and left.
Antonio Gramsci (1891—1937) (p. 39) was a real Italian Communist. He did write volumes of political and philosophical thought while in prison, which were finally published (in Italian) in 1947. It’s unlikely that Edmund and Eleanor would have met fellow Communists who were imprisoned with him—but not impossible.
Events like the ‘ugly festival’ described in Chapter 11 really did happen. One or two readers have said to me that they can’t see what’s so bad about it—after all, the women weren’t killed. Perhaps so, but you need to think about the values the festival implies: is it a good start for the making of a just and humane society?
The events described in Chapter 14—A Diversion—are, again, unlikely but not impossible. The journeys by UNRRA staff into war-damaged Germany were chaotic and as the Nazis retreated, all sorts of unexpected horrors were haphazardly revealed. The British teams who uncovered Belsen had no idea what to expect.
Neukirchen is a fictious town. Some German friends have told me that the name sounds right.
The requisitioning process described in Chapter 16 (Neukirchen) really happened. However, like a lot of recent novelists, I haven’t been able to resist tweaking the standard procedure. The military government rules insisted that all Germans should leave their houses when they were requisitioned. But it makes such a good plot to have the Germans remaining and sharing their houses with their American, French and British liberators. My excuse is that UNRRA personnel were less likely to follow those rules to the letter than military officers.
I could claim that by side-stepping one ‘truth’ (the prohibition on Germans staying in their own homes), The Displaced illuminates another ‘truth’ (the relationships between Germans and Allied personnel).
Edmund’s UNRRA team. In April and May 1945 UNRRA was mobilized belatedly and in a hurry. Its original plan had been to send teams of approximately 12 out to Germany. But there wasn’t time to train large numbers, so someone cleverly devised the idea of small, ‘spearhead’ teams of 6. In practice, once in place, these small teams grew quickly. Furthermore, the strains and stresses of working in Germany meant a rapid turnover in personnel. So, it is extremely unlikely that the same team of 6 would have stayed in place for a year.
My reason for fixing this unlikely stability is that I guessed readers might find a constant change of personnel difficult to follow.
The Interlude: in 1945 Morocco was still seen as the right place for healing lung problems. Orwell went out there in 1939. His essay ‘Marrakech’ was an inspiration for this section.
In Chapter 35, Edmund uncovers a morphine-smuggling ring within his camp. It’s unlikely that an UNRRA team leader would have acted so decisively, but there’s no doubt that corruption was endemic—The Third Man (both Graham Greene’s novel and Orson Welles’ film) illustrates this well.
It’s unlikely that a group of Jewish DPs would have killed a German policeman, but there were several incidents of Jewish DPs shooting at local police.
