The Bridge - A short story

RRP: Free

Format: ebook
Publisher: Acute Angle Books
Publication date: 20th July 2012

The Bridge is free to download for any device.

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A broken down truck blocking a bridge over the river in rural Holland leads to an unexpected encounter between a Dutch woman and an English holiday maker. Could this middle-aged, bearded man really be the young soldier she had fallen in love with when he dropped from the skies to capture the very same bridge 30 years ago?

A heartbreaking love story set amongst some of the most brutal and devastating scenes of the Second World War written by a man who witnessed it all and lived to tell the tale.

Contained within the pages of this FREE ebook are the very first words written by William E. Thomas after he bought himself a word processor and decided to sit down and write a book. The year was 1992, he had not long retired and had become bored of the life of a pensioner.

He called his first work simply ‘Opus 1’. It has been given a new title ready for publication.

Although Opus 1 was initially written as a standalone work, elements of it ended up becoming part of his much larger work, The Cypress Branches, which he started to write almost immediately after completing his first short story. Although it underwent a considerable amount of editing and the story was changed to integrate it into the longer storyline, some readers will recognise it as forming the basis of the first chapter of Pegasus Falling - part 1 of the Cypress Branches trilogy, which is available now as a paperback and ebook.

On completing Opus 1, William sent the manuscript to his eldest daughter for review. A simple, typed memo attached declared, ‘Of course there is some artistic licence and more than a suspicion of hyperbole, but the tale is in general, true.’

As with his subsequent work, William drew on many and varied incidents from his own life and weaved them together into a gripping and heartbreaking work of fiction. William was a paratrooper, and was involved in the ill-fated operation to capture the bridge at Oosterbeek, near Arnhem in Holland, the fabled Operation Market Garden which ended so badly for the troops involved. William was one of the lucky few who managed to escape back home and tell the tale. Many of his friends were not so fortunate. To read more about William, please see the About The Author section, found at the end of the story.

Opus 1, ‘The Bridge’, is presented here exactly as it was written in October 1992 as an introduction to William’s work.

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