For You the War is Over


                     

Dr Paul Skrebels is currently working on:

For You the War is Over.

Taken from Dan Billany and David Dowie's original manuscripts, now in the Imperial War Museum. In May 1949 Longman's published The Cage and generated a run of very favourable reviews; however it was only a partial representation of the work intended by the authors to be called For You the War is Over.

      This book is intended to take you into the strange world where we have now been living for a year. Naturally a small fee is payable.

If we delayed writing till we got back to England we should gain in tranquility, but in every thing else we should lose. We have no idea how we shall regard this interlude in the future years. The only thing we can be sure of is that we will not see it in the way we see it now. Therefore the picture we mean to draw now is the one which we should lose for ever if we delayed —

"Ere the fleeting hour goes by,

Quick! Thy tablets, Memory."

    For as we write this, we are in it. We are not even 'certain' that we shall ever go back to England. At the moment there is not a whisper of release, and the war seems well able to go on for ever. Freedom is a hypothesis, prison is a fact. 

                                                                 DB and DD

    Dr Paul Skrebels  has been restoring the work to its original state, and in the foreword to the book Dr Skrebels explains  —

Two principal tasks were in involved in the restoration of For You the War is Over.The first was to revise the text of the 1949 edition so that it more accurately reflects the final draft of the manuscript. Thus previously omitted passages have been reintegrated, while other sections altered or amended in various ways have been returned to their original form. Second, the illustrations - hitherto unavailable to the public have been included.The thumbnail sketches have been placed in or around the text as close as possible to their original positions,at least as far as the transcription from longhand to word-processed typescript allows, while the larger scenes of prison-camp life return to their key roles as text in their own right. In addition, certain other portraits and scenes from the notebooks, although apparently not intended by the authors for inclusion,, have been employed to add variety and depth to the largely unembellished latter part of the work, and so provide some balance to the much illustrated episodes of the earlier part. Another stage of the project will entail the addition of notes and appendices drawn from the notebooks, earlier drafts and other works by Billany and Dowie, as well as broader background and contextual information as aids for contemporary readers and researchers.

       There is no question that The Cage, even in its first published form, is a remarkable work and a noteworthy addition to the canon of WWII and POW literature. It is hoped that in its restored form as For You the War is Over it will be recognised both as a unique and groundbreaking tour-de-force in war writing, and for its potential to contribute even further to our understanding and appreciation of that body of work and of the times and the people who helped to create it.

the Melitti Family, risking their own lives, gave Dan and David shelter from the Germans for nearly a month. When the WWII was over Dino Melitti sent a parcel to the Billany family—it contained the manuscripts to The Trap and The Cage.

                                                                                                        .... work in progress ... >>>NEXT>>>