I’m writing about writing a book.
About 15 years ago I was visiting my wife’s family in Edinburgh and saw something in the paper about a memorial service for the members of Heart of Midlothian FC who had died in World War I. I walked down to Haymarket and watched the service, and then I began to learn what I could about that team. I had a tough time finding much information and had all but given up the idea when I mentioned it to my book agent last summer. She encouraged me to take it up again. I very quickly realized why I couldn’t discover much about the subject — I had never found Jack Alexander’s great history of their battalion.
Jack scoured Scotland and beyond for information on the 16th Royal Scots, popularly known as “McCrae’s Battalion,” and wrote a fantastic book that I strongly encourage you to read. He also runs the McCrae’s Battalion Trust, which was behind the erection of a memorial to the battalion in Contalmaison, France, and continues to keep the memory of the 16th alive. Give them your money!
I was lucky enough to meet Jack on a trip to Edinburgh at the end of 2015 and shared with him my idea of bringing the story of McCrae’s to Americans somehow. He was encouraging. So I began to do my own research and wrote a proposal, which ended up with Regan Arts. It plans to publish my book in April 2018, which seems like a long way off until you realize it means you have just one year to research, report and write a whole book (while keeping your day job) before you have to turn it in and they do whatever it is they do that takes another year.
I’ve been working now for a couple of months on the project and decided I should open up my reporting process and document it. Who knows — maybe the universe will bring me to great information! I’ve already been very lucky so far and have found some wonderful sources, and I’m always looking for more.
The reason I’m writing this book is because the story of the 16th Royal Scots really resonated with me. We tend to learn about World War I in terms of nations, and very rarely do we hear about how those massive events landed on ordinary people. The story of why those football players exchanged the glory of the playing field for the horrors of the battlefield may be small in the larger context of the Great War, but it helps explain of the sacrifices so many millions of people made at the turn of the last century. I hope with this book to honor them, and the work of the people who’ve studied them before me, and to hopefully shine a light on a war my countrymen, sadly, don’t know that much about.
Jeez, this is long! I’ll try to keep these things briefer. Mostly I’ll be sharing what I’ve learned along the way. Please get in touch, and thanks for reading. Oh! And buy Jack’s book.
