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I found this note among a box of papers loaned me by the Derome family - a note in Tom's appalling handwriting giving details of how everyone is to behave at the moment of the Armistice. Gaston had copied out the first paragraph in his diary. The full transcript is given in the diary transcription document.
Place
All the roads, finally, have led to Bavay.
People
Evie may not be there in the flesh, but she is in spirit, with an exultant Tom and Luneau riding through the beleaguered villages nearby and then into Bavay where a shell almost unites all of them in an inglorious end.
Fact and Fiction
Very little embellishment here as Tom's account is so detailed, down to the townsfolk kissing Daisy's nose and his feet in the stirrups.
I have played with timescales to allow Lochdubh's looting to come to the fore at this moment. The looting is real, and it is carried out by a West Coast soldier-laird, but I have laid so many other crimes at Lochdubh's door that it is better he has a separate name.
Gaston's walled-off wine cellar is also of my invention, but I wouldn't have put it past him. I have enjoyed visits to the Rue des Juifs house very much and have drunk some excellent wine there.