Dave Mason on Between the Clouds and the River

Dave Mason

Author Dave Mason discusses the inspirations behind his novel Between the Clouds and the River.
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Dave Mason on Between the Clouds and the River

Dave, where did you get the idea of the story from?

The initial spark for Between the Clouds and the River came from an account of a former German prisoner of war. Let’s just say that story immediately sent me down a research rabbit hole! By the end of 1945, there were more than 700 POW camps scattered across the massive geography of both Canada and the United States, and they held more than 450,000 primarily German and Italian prisoners. And a vast majority of them were actually employed—paid to work as farm hands, laborers, mill workers, etc. That fact alone was fascinating, and it led me to stories in which many former prisoners related the fondness they felt for their former captors and employers. There are many tales of ex-POWs returning to both Canada and the US after the war in order to reconnect with families and employers with whom they’d formed strong positive bonds. When I read some of their recollections, I couldn’t help but wonder what kinds of wider human stories those experiences might have created. But it was when I read a certain statistic that my imagination went into overdrive. Of the 450,000 enemy soldiers held in those North American camps, some 2,200 escaped. Only seven were never accounted for. Where did those guys go? Are there people out there today who have no real idea about their actual family history? That’s fuel for a historical fiction bonfire.

Bernhardt Lang is the hero of your novel. What sort of man is he?

Bernhardt, like all of us, is a product of his circumstances, but also of the choices he makes as he tries to navigate them. From birth, he’s shaped by the various forces and pressures exerted upon him. As a small child, he lives under the thumb of a domineering father, then is forced to endure and navigate the severities of boarding school before being conscripted into the German army early in the war. The experiences through which he makes the transition from childhood to grown man are extraordinary, to say the least. So he’s complex. He’s thoughtful and compassionate, but of course he’s also a soldier who kills. He’s trustworthy, but at the same time he’s also a liar of epic proportions. At certain times in his life he’s a coward, at others he’s incredibly courageous. He’s sometimes cruel and heartless, but is often kind and merciful. And because of the unique path he ends up taking, he’s guarded, but he cares deeply for the few people who somehow find their way inside his emotional perimeter. Through all of those very human traits, he defies the labels and generalizations the various worlds he inhabits want to put on him.

Did you always have the plot for the novel, and the characters came later, or was it the other way round?

That’s a tough question. I learned a couple of terms when I wrote my first novel, when someone asked me if I’m a “plotter” or a “pantser.” Plotters plot—they apparently outline every aspect and detail of a story before they get down to the business of writing it. Pantsers, on the other hand, fly by the seats of their pants—apparently they just start writing and see where things take them. If I had to define my approach, I’d say I’m 75% pantser, 15% plotter, and 10% observer. For Between the Clouds and the River, I knew the framework within which I wanted to operate, and I knew some of the issues that might be wrapped up in that—constructs like citizenship, nationality, and immigration, and ideas like freedom, belonging, and family. And then there’s the thread that permeates the entire narrative: that when it comes to human beings, fiction (i.e. lying) is a huge part of life, and therefore it must be a huge part of history. As for the characters, for me, it’s as if the fictional people who deliver the humanity within the story’s broader concepts just kind of showed up, introduced themselves, and then got down to the business of living the imaginary lives into which I’d placed them. It’s a pretty strange thing to imagine a person, then let them tell you or show you what they might say or do, but that seems to be how it happens for me.

In your research, what did you discover regarding the experience of German troops fighting in North Africa?

German forces were first sent to North Africa to help shore up Mussolini in his failing efforts to defend Italian colonies. They were led by Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, who had the respect of both his own troops and of his enemies. It was Churchill himself who declared, before Parliament, in 1942, “We have a very daring and skilful opponent against us, and, may I say across the havoc of war, a great general.” But following some early successes, the Afrika Korps was ultimately blunted by strong British and Commonwealth resistance, and by serious logistical challenges partly brought on by Allied air superiority. After the US entered the theater in November of 1942, the weight of Allied forces there became overwhelming, and in May 1943, the Afrika Korps surrendered, along with all the other remaining Axis forces in North Africa.

A couple of things stood out to me during my research.

Germany inflicted brutal abuses and atrocities on indigenous populations in its own African colonies. For example, the concentration camp at Shark Island, German South West Africa (present-day Namibia) was basically an early 20th century template for what would come later, including racially centered medical experimentation on prisoners and murder on a genocidal scale. Yet German forces in WWII North Africa were considered to be “moral” and somehow engaged in “war without hate,” and the Afrika Korps gained a reputation among the Allies as being essentially “clean” warfighters. And while it’s reported that Erwin Rommel openly protested against Hitler’s racial policies—among other things, he apparently refused to execute Jewish POWs, and the war did not end well for him!—it seems that some of the hardline, committed Nazis within the lower ranks of the Afrika Korps who were captured early in the conflict tended to hold German soldiers who surrendered later in contempt, often meting out severe punishment and even death on those they deemed disloyal or traitorous.

In my novel, the “us and them” aspects within the German POW population comes into play, and that dynamic, combined with the mostly generous and fair treatment the prisoners experience at the hands of their captors, turns the simplistic concept of “allies and enemies” on its head.

 

There is a fascinating aspect to the story with the huge numbers of POWs based in the US and Canada. How long were they imprisoned for after the war, and presumably the experience wasn’t unpleasant?

Because massive numbers of POWs were actually employed during captivity (that cheap labor helped offset the shortage of young male workers who were off fighting and dying in Europe and the Pacific), a great many repatriations were delayed by up to a year or more after the end of hostilities in 1945. As mentioned, many POWs actually enjoyed their experiences in the US and Canada, forming bonds with their supposed enemies, and clearly some were extremely leery of returning to homes that no longer existed, or to parts of Germany that were under Soviet control. And post-war politics certainly loomed large, especially for German POWs, some of whom were transferred to allies like France and used as slave labor, or to the Soviet Union, where a great many suffered worse fates. Some German POWs held in Russia were not set free until the mid-1950s, and they were the lucky ones.

Part of your novel is set in both Montana and British Columbia. These are huge states/provinces. Could POWs simply escape into the vastness of the wilderness?

I grew up in British Columbia and have spent a lot of time in the northwestern states of Washington, Oregon, and Montana. That people can simply disappear into that vastness has been proven over and over again. Some of them even survived! Given the places and circumstances in which my fictional characters find themselves—and the 1940s timeframe—there’s every reason to think that such an escape and evasion would be possible.

The story that planted the seeds for this novel involved an actual German POW who escaped from a New Mexico camp, only to turn up in Hawaii some 40 years later. Another documented example of POW escape and evasion within North America is that of Franz von Werra, a Luftwaffe pilot who was shot down over England in September of 1940. Hardy Krüger played him in the 1957 film The One That Got Away.

In January of 1941, while in transit to a camp on the remote north shore of Lake Superior, Ontario, von Werra apparently jumped from a train and made his way south to the St. Lawrence River. If you’ve ever been to that part of Canada in January, you’ll appreciate how difficult it must have been, but he managed to cross the frozen river, make his way to Ogdensburg, New York, and turn himself in to the police. Of course, the US was still neutral at that time, so he was charged with illegal immigration, and the German consul simply paid his bail.

While the US and Canadian governments were trying to figure out an extradition, he crossed the border into Mexico. He reached Germany in April 1941, where he was awarded the Knight’s Cross and given the task of improving German techniques for interrogating captured pilots, based on his experiences with the Allied system. Apparently because he reported how well he’d been treated as a POW, treatment of Allied POWs in Germany was improved. He was eventually reassigned to flight operations and posted to the Netherlands where he was presumed killed (his body was never found) after his Bf 109 fighter crashed into the sea while he was on a training flight. Dude should have stayed in Canada!

You’ve written about the ‘invisibility of older people’. It sounds like you’ve spoken to many of our elders with rich experiences. What stood out for you?

I think it’s fair to say that as people age, they somehow get blended into the background of society. I find it curious that so much attention is focused on the young, while it’s the luckiest among us who get to live long lives. And some among us lead long and incredibly fascinating lives. I grew up at a time and in places where war veterans were everywhere. But by then they were only relatives, teachers, sports coaches, or accountants. In a lot of cases, I only found out long after they’d passed that they’d been tank commanders in the Western Desert, bomber pilots flying over the North Sea, or had waded ashore from a landing craft at Juno Beach. Fortunately, by now I’ve met enough people who’ve seen and done things beyond imagination that I find it hard to look at anyone and not wonder what stories they might be able—or might be unable—to tell. So you never know who might be hiding in plain sight. Never assume…

Which authors have influenced your writing?

I’ve read and enjoyed the work of so many authors in so many genres that it’s hard to pinpoint which of them might have influenced my writing style. I’m guessing that like many authors, certain traits or styles may have settled into my psyche over the years, but my sense is that that stuff gets put into a blender along with every other potential source of influence—from personal experience to film and television to music and art—to be reconstituted as a literary smoothie that’s hopefully mostly unique.

What’s next?

I’m still having fun with the writing thing, so I’m still doing it. There’s just something about the combination of research and imagination required to create the kind of historical fiction I’m drawn to that makes sense to me. I’ve got a couple of things on the burners, covering topics ranging from the Inuit and Vikings to Nazis and NASA. I’ll keep you posted!

Dave Mason is the author of Between the Clouds and the River which is available now.