The true story of Private Peaceful(l)
Discovering a misspelling on a First World War headstone helped Sir Michael Morpurgo to right some grave wrongs, he tells Joe Shute
Around 20 years ago, Sir Michael Morpurgo, the children’s author, and his wife Clare were walking through Bedford House Cemetery on the outskirts of Ypres. As Clare scanned the neat rows of headstones of 5,140 First World War servicemen laid to rest among the rushes and willows, a name leapt out: Private TSH Peaceful of the Royal Fusiliers, killed on June 4 1915. Inspired by the name, the War
Horse author lent it to his next book, Private Peaceful, which was published in 2003 and told the stories of two brothers, Thomas and Charlie, who are sent to fight in the trenches. After Charlie disobeys his commanding officer to stay with his injured brother out in no-man’sland, he is accused of cowardice and executed – the fate, Morpurgo discovered, of about 300 British and Commonwealth soldiers during the First World War.
Since publication, Private
Peaceful has become a mainstay of school education with thousands of children travelling to lay wreaths at the headstone each year. There is, however, a problem; a historical inaccuracy that, until last week, had persisted for more than a century.
For Peaceful, the name on the headstone, never actually existed. The young man behind the myth was in fact Thomas Samuel Henry Peacefull.
The misspelling first came to light when a family member of the real life Private Peacefull heard a radio play of Morpurgo’s book. It prompted the soldier’s great-niece, Maxine Keeble (née Peacefull), to write to the author to tell him of the mistake and also the story of her ancestor, which she has researched in great depth.
Last week, during a simple dedication service at Bedford House Cemetery, Keeble, 73, John, her husband of 51 years, Morpurgo, his wife and officials from the Commonwealth War Graves Commission stood with heads bowed as a new headstone bearing the correct spelling was installed.
Morpurgo, 74, read out the exhortation, while Keeble, a retired textile art teacher who lives in Orpington, Kent, read Lt Col John Mccrae’s poem In Flanders Fields. “We are a family of strong characters,” she said to The Daily Telegraph after the service. “And as I walked up to do the reading I said to myself: you’re a Peacefull. Don’t you dare let everybody down.”
Despite his long association chronicling – and illuminating – the history of the Great War, Morpurgo admitted the “understated and wonderful” dedication service was the first he had attended for an individual soldier.
“Today, the line has been drawn,” he said. “We were at a ceremony which was nothing to do with Private Peaceful the book, but Private Peacefull the young man who died.”
The real-life Private Peacefull was born on September 7 1893, in Battersea, London, the second of five brothers and one sister. A family of modest means – his father, also Thomas, was described in the 1911 census as a medical tube glass maker – four of the brothers fought in the First World War.
The eldest, Henry Peacefull, was killed on the first day of the Battle of the Somme in 1916. Another, William, was caught on barbed wire and ended up a prisoner of war. Maxine’s grandfather, Lewis, survived the fighting but never spoke much of what he called “that horrible war”. It is said within the family that he ended up burying one of the brothers on the Western Front, although nobody knew which one. Private Thomas Peacefull landed in France on November 11 1914, and joined the 4th Battalion of the Royal Fusiliers at Ypres. At some point between June 3 and 4, 1915, Thomas Peacefull was wounded in the front line and evacuated to an advance dressing station in the cellars of the Ypres Asylum. He died of his wounds hours later, aged 21, and was buried nearby (following the war, the asylum cemetery was consecrated into Bedford House).
Keeble, who has two daughters and two grandchildren, says it is deeply emotional standing among the graves of so many young men.
While the family did not ask for the headstone to be changed – once the Commonwealth War Graves Commission is aware of an error it is obliged to correct it – they have been deeply moved to see the proper Peacefull name in place. “It’s because it separates the fictitious story from my relative,” says Keeble. “The story is about a young lad who gets shot for desertion and I’ve had a job trying to explain to my grandchildren that wasn’t the case in real life, and [that] they just used the name as an inspiration. That is not what happened to him and they found that quite difficult to grasp.”
Still, there remain similarities between the fictional character and the real life soldier. Morpurgo did not know Private Peacefull’s name was Thomas, yet chose it for his book. At the book’s conclusion, the other brother is marching off to the Somme – where Henry Peacefull was killed.
“At the time of writing I didn’t know any of this and that is what is so bizarre about the whole thing,” the author says.
Morpurgo first learnt of the number of soldiers shot for desertion and cowardice during the First World War while at an exhibition at the In Flanders Fields Museum in Ypres.
Among the items on display was a letter sent to the parent of a soldier who had been shot at dawn for cowardice. “It really took my breath away,” he says. “I could see whoever had received the envelope had ripped it open and I knew that motion was the end of a family and the end of a life.”
He then started reading court martial transcripts to glean a sense of why so many soldiers had been shot.
“There were sufficient numbers, which clearly there was some debate about,” he says. “And the biggest debate of all was their mental state. Mostly it was just people who refused to go forward. I decided
I had to write about one of these people. This was a story that needed to be told.”
In 2006, three years after the publication of Private Peaceful, Des Browne, Labour’s then defence secretary, announced all 306 British and Commonwealth soldiers executed for desertion or cowardice in the First World War were to be pardoned, admitting “grave injustices” had been done.
Morpurgo says he was among those to have petitioned the government calling for change, and soon after his book came out, he wrote a letter to Cherie Blair. “I’m not saying it was because of this book but there was pressure on the families of executed men,” he says. “She wrote back to me and said she was going to pass it on to authorities.”
He says he has been deeply heartened by the thousands of schoolchildren now coming to lay their wreaths at the Peacefull headstone each year, and hopes his book has helped lay the wartime taboo to rest.
“In my story both Thomas and Charlie Peaceful are not guilty of anything except being extraordinary brave soldiers and loving brothers,” he says. “There is nothing to be ashamed of in those characters. I didn’t make them into villains. You don’t take a name like that and turn it into something full of cowardice.”
The name Private Peaceful may now no longer exist on a headstone at Bedford House Cemetery, but Morpurgo hopes his story can continue to inspire new generations to make the pilgrimage to Flanders.
“It’s impossible for young people to look at these graves and care,” he says. “Somehow you have to bring one of those stones alive.”
‘The story is about a young lad shot for desertion. That wasn’t the case in real life ’