Download The Canal Bridge: A Novel of Ireland, Love, and the First World War AudioBook Free
In 1913, before there's a rumor of war in European countries, Matthias Wrenn and Con Hatchel, lifelong friends from Ballyrannel in the Irish midlands, opt to see the world at the expense of the ruler of Great britain and join the British army. A season later, while en route to India, their troop ship is recalled and they soon end up in the Western slaughterhouse that was World War I. As stretcher bearers, both men witness all too directly the horrors of the battlefield and the trenches, the savagery, and the unconscionable waste of human life on fields made liquid by "the blood vessels and guts of young man military" at the Somme, Ypres, and Passchendaele. In the meantime, back in Ireland, Con's sister and Matthias's enthusiast, Kitty Hatchel, yearns for his or her safe come back and reminds them of these carefree childhood on the lenders of the neighborhood canal, as well as their expectations for the future.Brilliantly and movingly narrated by a chorus of voices from the community - Matt, Con, Kitty, and more - The Canal Bridge explains to the storyplot of how the young men take Ballyrannel to war with them, and how the war comes back home when hostilities result in European countries. The Ireland the friends remaining in 1913 no more is present, for the politics landscape has been changed by the Increasing against the United kingdom in 1916. It really is now a land riven with sectarian tensions and bloodshed from which there is no escape.
