An Eagle in the Snow

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An Eagle in the Snow
Michael Morpurgo

The powerful new novel from the master storyteller - inspired by the true story of one man who might have stopped World War II.1940. The train is under attacks from German fighters. In the darkness, sheltering in a railway tunnel, the stranger in the carriage with Barney and his mother tells them a story to pass the time.And what a story. The story of a young man, a young soldier in the trenches of World War I who, on the spur of the moment, had done what he thought was the right thing.It turned out to have been the worst mistake he ever could have made – a mistake he must put right before it is too late…

Copyright (#ulink_93c0e00e-2fd7-5967-aed4-11f8ecda19c5)

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Children’s Books in 2015

HarperCollins Children’s Books is a division of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd,

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk)

Text copyright © Michael Morpurgo 2015

Illustrations © Michael Foreman 2015

Photographs in Afterword © Shutterstock.com

Cover photographs © The Catcher Photography/Getty Images (boy); DDP/Camera Press (SS soldiers); Juniors Bildarchiv GmbH/Alamy (German Shepherd); Zoonar GmbH/Alamy (background); Shutterstock.com (eagle); BPK/Bayerische Staatsbibliothek/Heinrich Hoffman (back cover)

Jacket Design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2015

Michael Morpurgo and Michael Foreman assert the moral right to be identified as the author and illustrator of the work.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780008134150

Ebook Edition © ISBN: 9780008134181

Version: 2015-09-15

Contents

Cover (#uba29306d-99ee-53a3-acd6-753f61e36a48)

Title Page (#ua16f932c-657d-5b47-8e05-c2a4704ab48e)

Copyright (#ua32c3651-2a54-5ffa-8fc6-ec36dda9a9e9)

Foreword (#u904925f2-4fdf-5b1d-8705-1b2ed5cc6657)

Part One: The 11.50 to London (#u65eca29e-9be0-5a73-ac71-15e0ced3d6eb)

Chapter 1 (#u8a49b223-f390-55ec-a1d6-5c993640753e)

Chapter 2 (#u5cce559a-720c-5131-9f21-758ba918eb5f)

Chapter 3 (#u87eacd06-0072-595f-b84f-a1da565c23aa)

Part Two: Billy Byron (#u3f831556-ea67-58d2-a05f-a7ad4a9fbec8)

Chapter 1 (#u5a4cf3a4-5253-5bdd-b9a1-44efde1e5da7)

Chapter 2 (#ue8e8a7d4-57ae-5282-8ffd-bab904c9eb04)

Chapter 3 (#u391f9e21-b64b-5beb-88c7-717b67a0710d)

Part Three: If Ever a Look Could Kill (#u75771c67-fe6a-5cd5-bb23-e3f27949a8fb)

Chapter 1 (#u99e0306c-da09-569d-aa27-a99e8e56b076)

Chapter 2 (#uc8d9af95-9d27-5a3b-b914-a9b828ee3be3)

Chapter 3 (#u932beb9a-9525-5934-918e-95a179c20b89)

Part Four: Eagle in the Snow (#u72fb98e7-227d-56f0-995f-a61555b1c8ed)

Chapter 1 (#u7899da8d-71c0-5852-bc16-3f19c7340ee1)

Chapter 2 (#ufeddd96f-93d9-5fd1-a9f9-6ef4229ed4fe)

Chapter 3 (#uec317ceb-768e-5910-a500-3e8c437b4d69)

Chapter 4 (#u85b9b415-d92b-5ad2-8c18-b8bd73f2f9ea)

Epilogue (#ud4058836-ae25-5702-b365-6d9948ef905c)

Afterword (#u5d845fa6-4eb2-50a4-a746-c1e3706880c0)

Keep Reading (#ud882d802-59a1-5c2d-a291-38b17573094d)

Also by Michael Morpurgo (#u8bb006fc-d3d0-5593-8cdc-1a2dbcb183f3)

About the Publisher (#u65e12f14-d4b3-54f9-93b1-e5a3d897c0ca)

This book is dedicated to Private Henry Tandey VC.

And this is why. Many of my stories have come from the lives of others, from truths, written or remembered, this one perhaps more than any other. Certainly had I not discovered, through Michael Foreman, the extraordinary story of the life and death of Walter Tull, the first black officer to serve in the British Army, I should never have written A Medal for Leroy. Had I not met an old soldier from the First World War who had been to that war with horses, in the cavalry, I should not have written War Horse. Had I not come across, in a museum in Ypres, an official letter from the army to the mother of a soldier at the front in that same war, informing her that her son had been shot at dawn for cowardice, I should never have told my story of Private Peaceful. It was a medal commemorating the sinking of the Lusitania by torpedo in 1915 with terrible loss of life, over a thousand souls, that compelled me to think of writing the story of a survivor, which I did in Listen to the Moon.

I write fiction, but fiction with roots in history, in the people who made our history, who fought and often died in our wars. They were real people who lived and had their being in another time, often living and suffering through great and terrible dangers, facing these with unimaginable courage. My challenge as a story maker has been to imagine that courage, to live out in my mind’s eye, so far as I can, how it must have been for them.

So when I was told by Dominic Crossley-Holland, history producer at the BBC, about the extraordinary life and times of Henry Tandey, the most decorated Private soldier of the First World War, I wanted to explore why he did what he did. This I have done, not by writing his biography. That had been done already. Rather I wanted to make his life the basis of a fictional story that takes his story beyond his story, and tries to explore the nature of courage, and the dilemma we might face when we discover that doing the right thing turns out to be the worst thing we have ever done.

Because the life of Henry Tandey is so closely associated with this story, I thought it right to include the history so far as it is known, of his actual life. This you will find in the postscript at the end of the book.

Michael Morpurgo

16

February 2015

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