Yuangrat and I have always enjoyed historical novels that allow readers to live vicariously through interesting periods of history. Such novels, when well-done, provide a feel for history that goes beyond what all but the best academic history books can do. Two recently published novels achieve this for the Thai experience of the two World Wars.
Last to the Front
The novel Last to the Front by Gee Svasti follows a company of Thai transport troops sent to Europe to serve in World War I. The delivery of ammunition to the front puts the Thai truck drivers in range of big German guns. Although some suffered wounds from the shelling, the only deaths were from accidents and disease. The Thai soldiers suffer from the confusion, bureaucratic incompetence and shortages of wartime Europe.
Like troops from Africa, India and Indo-China, the Thais face European ignorance and racism, but manage to do their jobs effectively and sometimes bravely. The Thais do not imagine their efforts and sacrifices will make much difference in the outcome of the war, but serve from a sense of duty and adventure. The Siamese government’s objectives were to gain a voice in the post-war revision of treaties and re-distribution of territory.
Svasti takes the Thai troops from their rural homes, through their training and the difficult sea journey to Europe. He paints a detailed picture of the Thai experience in evocative language showing personal knowledge of the areas of France and Germany where the Thai troops were active.
The author uses his imagination to fill in the blanks left by traditional history, but, as far as we can tell, never violates the facts of that history. The Thai soldiers come alive as individuals: the competent and honorable Chai, the self-doubting and temperamental Sumet, the rough but brave Born, and the overwhelmed embassy official Pramot. Unlike many historical novels about Thailand, all but one of the main characters are Thai and none of them are stereotypes.
A tentative romance between Chai and a French school teacher appears doomed by racism and the chaos of war. It is only in the epilogue we learn the fate of the lovers.
Gee Svasti is a Thai-British writer and media entrepreneur who splits his time between Thailand and Europe. Previous books include the novel A Dangerous Recipe and the magical children's book, Rabbit Cloud and the Rain Makers.
Thai troops march in Paris in a parade celebrating victory in World War I.
Times of Love and War
Claire Keefe-Fox, a French-American writer with a degree in Thai studies, has written a wide-ranging novel of World War II, sweeping the reader from Siam to China, Burma and India. The main protagonists are an Irish-American nurse and a British journalist and intelligence agent, but she also creates Thai characters – a courageous doctor and an upper class lady that ring true.
The story begins in pre-war Bangkok with the unlikely romance between Lawrence Gallet, the privileged Englishman, and Kate Fallon, the lower-class American who has fled a broken romance to serve with French nuns at St. Louis Hospital.
Gallet, with little direction in life, is in Bangkok living with aristocratic Thai friends and trying to write a book about the 1932 overthrow of the traditional Thai monarchy. This allows Keefe-Fox, a former director of the Alliance Francais in Bangkok, to imagine the interactions among the leading Thai politicians – Prime Minister Pibulsonggram and his rival, Pridi Banomyong. The device is unusual, but we enjoyed it because we devoted three chapters of our history Radical Thought, Thai Mind to Pridi and Pibulsonggram.
In anticipation of the war coming to Southeast Asia, Gallet is recruited and trained as an agent for Britain’s Special Operations Executive (SOE). The purpose of SOE was to conduct espionage, sabotage and reconnaissance in occupied Southeast Asia, and to aid local resistance movements.
When Japanese forces invade Thailand, Gallet escapes to China and then Burma, while Kate disguises her American nationality and continues to work at the hospital. Keefe-Fox paints a believably gritty picture of the hardships of life in Bangkok under Japanese wartime domination. There are shortages of food and medicine and fears of the Kempeitai, the ruthless military police of the Japanese Army.
A Japanese doctor discovers Kate’s nationality and threatens to expose her as an enemy national. He forces her to serve him as his nurse and sex slave, but the conflicted doctor also helps her send food packets to prisoners and steals medicines for her to use at the hospital. When one of her friends, an Irish nurse, dies, Kate assumes her identity and the death is registered as Kate’s.
Dr. Sumet, one of the hospital doctors, is drawn into the Seri Thai resistance that operates under the secret leadership of Pridi. At the same time, Gallet is working as a journalist and interacting with newsmen covering the war in Southeast Asia. He barely survives the disastrous British retreat from Burma, walking through the jungle to India.
Once he has recovered, he is charged with training the Free Thai agents who are to be infiltrated back into Thailand to sabotage the Japanese. He is devastated when word comes that Kate has died. It is only when he returns to their former house, he finds word she may still be alive.
Keefe-Fox does an excellent job of weaving her tale between her fictional characters and historical personages, such as Vinegar Joe Stillwell, Pridi, and a variety of well-known American and British journalists. She manages to give us a feel for the confusion and horror of the war as well as the difficult moral choices people are forced to make under the stress of conflict.
Defeated Japanese soldiers being sent to prisoner of war camps outside Bangkok in 1945
Keefe-Fox is the author of the novel Siamese Tears, which brings to life the French aggression against Siam in the late 1800s through the eyes of a British-French woman in Bangkok. She has also written three novels about Thailand in French.
Both Svasti and Keefe-Fox give us well-researched stories that bring Thai history alive, accomplishments we will try to emulate in our upcoming novel Beads on a String.
Note: The two new novels can be purchased now at https://www.riverbooksbk.com/, and both should be available on Amazon.com April 15.