Brothers in arms
Mon 1 May 2017Think you’ve heard all the stories there are to be told about the First World War? Think again. The Unknown Soldier is the story of Jack, who stayed on in France after the armistice. He has a promise to keep and debt to repay, and then comes a strange request from the generals…
Ross Ericsson, writer and performer of The Unknown Soldier says: “Channel surfing one day I came across a clip from Who Do You Think You Are, I think it was the actress Natalie Cassidy from Eastenders, and it mentioned that one of her relatives, who had fought in the First World War, stayed on afterwards to help build the great cemeteries. It suddenly struck me that, despite knowing quite a bit about WWI, I knew very little about what happened directly after it. So I started reading up on it and from this came a germ of an idea.”
Armed with what he describes as, “a good idea and a new perspective” Ross set about the background research necessary to make sure his story was historically accurate: “It wasn’t that easy. There is very little written about the clearing up at the end of World War One or the riots and unrest that followed the men’s return home, so it took a lot of digging. However, there is a lot of verbatim stuff from the First World War, so it was easy to populate Jack’s memories – I even put some stories about my own grandfather in there.”
In concentrating on the aftermath of the war, Ross discovered some surprising things about the way soldiers were treated: “We’re lead to believe that there was a lot of sympathy for the the returning soldiers, Lloyd George went on about a land fit for heroes, but in truth that was not the case and many felt abandoned by their country and their communities – as is often the case with soldiers.”
He says he hopes the audience will take away: “That Remembrance Day is not for the politicians empty sound bites, or the flag waving, or the beating of the hollow drum, but to remember those that died so that we don’t make the same mistakes again.”
The Unknown Soldier: The Marlowe Studio, Friday 19 & Saturday 20 May.