About this Book
Rory Ferrall, a young Canadian officer of Anglo-German descent, is wounded and disfigured at the battle of Ypres during the First World War. After he’s shipped back to a convalescent hospital in Britain, his night terrors in German catch the attention of British Military Intelligence. Rory’s German-speaking North American background is invaluable to war planners desperate to discover Germany’s plans.
When the Allies capture a German-American officer, one of many who had left the U.S. to fight for the Fatherland, Rory is trained to impersonate him. He then “escapes” back to Germany to infiltrate the German General Staff and discover their top-secret plan to break the stalemate on the Western Front. In Germany, however, Ferrall’s mission is jeopardized when his identity become suspect, then further complicated when he becomes involved with an intelligent and free-thinking German nurse.
Suspense, moral and personal quandaries, and historical detail are all woven together with a realism that resonates as sharply today as it did nearly a century ago. The context of Three to a Loaf has been meticulously researched with original material drawn from regimental, national, and archived intelligence sources.
More than a page-turning novel of war and espionage, Three to a Loaf vividly portrays societies and individuals pushed to the breaking point. Goodspeed artfully blends the tension of a thriller with period detail and the detached commentary of a nitty-gritty travelogue. As an experienced soldier himself, the author tops it all with psychological understanding of a harried man facing soul-destroying ethical decisions.
From the participants’ eyes we glimpse the harrowing fate awaiting the losers of the world’s first total war. Goodspeed’s book is as much an explanation of how and why the world was driven to embrace the 20th century’s most brutal ideologies as it is a tale of how one man preserves his spirit and dignity in hopeless times.
In tracing the folly and desperation of a flailing civilization that has spun horribly out of control, the central theme of Three to a Loaf will strike a responsive chord in a readership today wrenched once more by polar tensions of security and morality.
Praise for Three to a Loaf
“A compelling account that is fiction in name only. Goodspeed’s research and personal military experience make this fast-paced story powerful and authentic, as real for World War I as The Red Badge of Courage was for the American Civil War.”
Major-General (Ret.) Lewis W. MacKenzie
“An exciting Great War story of soldiering and spying. Goodspeed’s book is almost unique for being well-written and accurate militarily…”
Prof. J.L. Granatstein, author of Canada’s Army: Waging War and Keeping the Peace
“A great read … didn’t put it down until 1 a.m. … a full-bodied, compelling espionage thriller. Goodspeed has captured the horror of life in the mud and blood-filled trenches of World War I as only an experienced soldier with a great eye can. On top of that, he’s got down pat the cultural differences in the manners, mindsets and methods of the Britons and Germans among whom his Canadian hero finds himself.”
Joe Schlesinger, award-winning CBC journalist and foreign correspondent
“Michael Goodspeed’s debut novel that’s set in the First World War will appeal to fans of both historical fiction and the espionage genre.”
Paul Bachmeier, National Post Book Reviews, July 19, 2008
© Michael J. Goodspeed
All rights reserved. Written permission of the publisher or a valid licence from Access Copyright is required to copy, store, transmit, or reproduce any part of this publication.
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PUBLISHING HISTORY
Print edition, soft cover, 2008
ISBN 978-0-9781600-6-7
Electronic edition, epub format, 2010
ISBN 978-1-926577-34-0
A CIP record for this title is available from Library and Archives Canada.
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Dedication
This book is dedicated to
my beautiful wife, Shannon,
who has shown immense patience
with all of this.
1
THERE ARE MANY fine personal accounts of the Great War and if I thought I had nothing new to tell, I would not have attempted this narrative. There are others who long ago achieved literary fame and who fought longer and in conditions of more sustained misery than those that I endured. My story differs from previous chronicles of this period. At critical phases of that terrible conflict I saw service on both sides; and, for a brief period, I held the power to alter the course of history. As to the value of this account and the nature of my actions, I have neither the vigour nor the desire to deal with my reader’s judgments. The war was a long time ago and I will meet my maker knowing I risked my life and shed my blood struggling to shape events for the betterment of mankind. If along the way I failed, I did so in good company. Future generations will come to their own conclusions on that war. I have made arrangements that this manuscript should only be made public long after I am dead. Although there were things I would like to have changed, I know what I did was right. And now, in my final years, I see no merit in submitting to the constant probing of the curious or the sceptical.
After more than eight decades, I’ve come to realize that life is a chain and its links are forged from people and events. I will begin this memoir with the event that prompted me to join the army. I had no doubts as to the nature of the war by the spring of 1915; by then, few of us did. The casualty lists had already been shocking enough and it didn’t take any great leap of the imagination to realize what conditions were like over there. My first step toward joining the army was taken on a grey day in March. Much of the snow had melted; and, like it always is at the end of the winter, what was left by that time was coarse and granular. The wind was raw, and summer still seemed a long way off. I was in Montreal standing on the curb-side outside McGill University’s library with Jeanine Dupuis, with whom I was wildly infatuated although she doubtlessly didn’t reciprocate my feelings in anything like the same measure.
The army had a hundredweight motor truck decked out with banners and flags. Perched behind the driver was an officer and beside him was an overweight sergeant with a bass drum. They were trolling through the campus looking for recruits. The fat old drummer was pounding away on his drum with one arm and wiping his brow with a handkerchief with the other. A middle-aged captain with a cardboard loud-hailer shouted at me.
“You, sir, climb aboard with us!” He already had three young men with him who were grinning self-consciously. “Yes, you, sir! You’d do one of our city’s regiments proud. Come down to the armouries with me and sign on.” He pointed to the drum. Stencilled around its edges were the words “Your King and Country Need You.”
I hadn’t really thought seriously about joining the army up to then. I was satisfied with my life up to that point; but I had other considerations. My father expected me to finish my education and take a