AUTHOR

Michael J Ingram

That's me, standing on the Nationalist positions at The Pimple—a battlefield where some of the fiercest fighting of the Spanish Civil War took place. It's also the setting for the climax of my first novel, And The Devil Just Laughed.

Since childhood, I’ve been fascinated by war. Watching Technicolor epics like Waterloo, Zulu, A Bridge Too Far, and The Longest Day, I was captivated by the heroism, duty, and—yes, at that young age—the glory of battle (an unpopular sentiment nowadays). Those moments, sitting beside my dad as he critiqued the realism, were special.

My brothers and I played “war” endlessly, though my mother had a strict rule: no toy rifles, only pistols. She feared we’d grow too attached to them—a tactic that backfired spectacularly when all three of us joined the Army.

I spent several years posted in Germany, immersing myself in the language, culture, and cuisine (perhaps too much of the latter). Even in the early '90s, echoes of World War II lingered. Bullet and shrapnel holes still scarred older buildings, and though Germany had long moved forward, history remained ever-present.

Later deployments took me to Bosnia and Croatia with the UN Peacekeeping Mission, and to Omagh in Northern Ireland, a year after the bombing. I struggled to reconcile the warmth and humour of the people with the deep, bitter hatred that had fuelled such conflict. Any lingering notions of "glory" in war were swiftly extinguished.

This led me to memoirs—especially those of German soldiers. I wanted to understand what went through their minds as the Soviet advance closed in, as they faced the consequences of a war their nation had wrought.

I remain fascinated by the psychology of soldiers, by what it takes to survive war, and how people reconcile their actions with their moral compass.

I hope that knowledge always remains second-hand.