Background of truth in poignant tale
Ateacher for 44 years, Des Hunt became an acclaimed writer of fiction for younger readers after an already accomplished sideline career producing textbooks for secondary schools. He’s always sought to bring together adventure stories with the things that interest him — science and New Zealand’s unique flora, fauna and natural history. In Broken Poppies, Hunt once again blends adventure and interests to tell the gripping tale of private Henry Hunt, who finds himself transplanted from a rural farm in New Zealand to World War I’s Western Front.
There he makes a rash promise to a little girl that will haunt him throughout the war and rescues a little dog, Poppy, who he must protect not just from German bombs and bullets, but the bureaucracy and pettiness of the British Army.
The characters are strong and compelling, the story filled with drama balanced with poignancy.
What lifts this story to another level, though, is that Henry Hunt was a real soldier, the author’s own uncle.
While the tale of rescuing a dog is pure fiction, the rest of the book is based on Henry’s actual war experience. It means the protrayal of the lives of ordinary Kiwi soldiers and what they had to endure is faithfully given.
Hunt makes the telling of the story seem effortless but beneath it are clearly hours of painstaking research.
The brutality and violence of war are well handled and young readers will come away having learned something of the NZ war effort in France, which too often is subsumed by our focus on Gallipoli.
Broken Poppies covers the hellish botch-up of the battle of Passchendaele and the drive to break the Hindenburg line, the German main defensive works in France.
The book is part of the Kiwis at War series by Scholastic, which cleverly has a different author write for each of the years of the war, with Poppies being the 1918 (and final) installment. A must-read for the year.