Richard Storey
Cut The Canary's Claws
Push those thoughts down. Bury them deep. Hide them from yourself. Hope they never come back, but you know they will…
How does north eastern miner Jack deal with psychological trauma and survivors guilt in the middle of a war, without help or understanding, when even the slightest sign of shellshock could get you shot for cowardice? In an attempt to resolve what happened to cause him his pain, Jack relives his time in the trenches and tunnels of WW1 and challenges the voices in his head that still taunt him despite the passage of time.
After a short spell in the trenches in 1915, Jack Cunningham, a miner from the North-East of England finds himself recruited as a tunneller to dig mines under the German lines, becoming involved in the underground warfare between the two sides.
Telling his story through a series of flashbacks, he is tormented by a voice inside his head, questioning his memories and his obvious guilt at surviving when others didn’t, swinging between varying states of confusion and control over his situation and over what is and isn’t real.
Why is this is happening now? All Jack knows is he wants to confront the past and feels driven to resolve the conflict rising up inside him.
As he uncovers more of this hidden life, his three closest friends, Sirindha Singh, a 6’ 5” Indian lieutenant, Billy, a fifteen-year-old boy soldier, and eighteen year old Percy, re-appear to him and Jack recalls their part in the build-up to the Messines Ridge battle, in which the British detonated twenty underground tunnels in the biggest explosion of the war, signalling the start of the battle of Passchendaele.
In the final hours before the explosion Jack’s memories and the voice become more erratic and violent until they eventually lead him to his own personal revelations, their unavoidable consequences, and at last a final and true resolution.
