The Secret Message (5 page)

In World War 1 (1914 – 1918) over 300 British and Commonwealth soldiers were accused of cowardice, desertion or even falling asleep at their posts – and were executed by their own firing squads. Some were only in their teens.

In 2006, the British Parliament finally granted pardons to WW1 executed soldiers.

‘I hope that pardoning these men will finally remove the stigma with which their families have lived for years.’
(Des Browne, the UK Defence Secretary in 2006.)

Many of their names did not appear on official war memorials.

As a child, I stood with my grandad and other World War One veterans on a cold November morning at the cenotaph for the Festival of Remembrance. He remained very still throughout and, as I looked up into his unseeing eyes, I could tell they hid such powerful memories and emotions. Maybe he was also thinking of his baby sister killed by a cricket ball or of Maud, his older
sister cruelly disabled by polio … as a brass band played

This book is dedicated to Sam, Tom, Ben & Esther – whose great great grandfather (my grandad) served as a young soldier in World War One. Many years later, with trusty guide dog at his side, he was an active fundraiser for Guide Dogs … and a dab hand with his typewriter.

Scientists now understand a lot about how the characteristics of parents (such as having blond hair or being tall) can be inherited by their children. This happens as a result of
genes
being passed on from one generation to the next. Genes are found in the bodies of nearly all living things.

Genes, and genetics, can probably explain how Sam and Freddy look very similar – to the point
of looking like twins (or, in this case, Sam, Freddy and Giles looking like triplets across time). It can also probably explain how Sam was such a good artist (like Freddy).

What genetics can’t explain is how Sam’s drawings looked exactly like Freddy’s, even though they were drawn a hundred years apart. Genes can make you good at drawing – but they won’t make you draw exactly the same pictures as your grandad.

Around 1800 a French scientist called 
Jean-Baptiste
Pierre Antoine de Monet, Chevalier de Lamarck
(‘Lamarck’ for short!) suggested that children inherited characteristics that their parents acquired during their (the parents’) lifetime. So if your father worked out in the gym a lot and developed big muscles, you would ‘inherit’ big muscles too.

At the time that Lamarck was writing, nobody knew about genes, so this sounded as if it might
be true. Now most scientists think that it isn’t the case.

Is there anything else in science that might explain the fact that Sam drew exactly the same pictures as Freddy?

How and what we inherit from our ancestors (including their experiences and memories) is a fascinating area that scientists continue to explore. The subject of
epigenetics
is likely to lead biologists to many more discoveries about what parents pass on to their children and grandchildren.

Some scientists talk about
memes
. These are like genes – they are passed on from one generation to the next. But in fact memes are nothing more than ideas, or bits of ideas, that live in our minds – like a part of a nursery rhyme or a popular tune, or our memory of the smell of
burnt toast. Babies are born and people die – but these memes seem to carry on forever, jumping from one person’s mind to another.

Perhaps one meme that carries on with many of us is our collective memory of the horrors of the first world war.

The past is part of us all.

Reading and writing secret messages was once impossible for blind people. In the early 1800s, Louis Braille of France invented a system for reading raised dots on a page by using the fingertips. Reading and writing using Braille has been used ever since by people unable to see a printed page.

Blinded soldiers returning from war were often
unable to learn or use Braille, particularly if their hands were damaged. Reading Braille needs very sensitive fingers.

Other ways of reading using touch were tried. Ordinary letters of the alphabet raised on the page need to be very large to be felt properly, which causes slow reading speeds and very bulky books.

In the 1840s, a blind Englishman called Dr William Moon invented another system of raised shapes. The letters are made up of lines and curves, similar to the printed alphabet. These shapes are rotated or reflected to create the 26 letters of the alphabet, with dots added for punctuation marks and numbers. The system is now just called
Moon
, after its inventor.

As the characters are fairly large and many resemble the normal printed alphabet, Moon has been particularly suitable for those who lose their sight later in life, or for people who may have a less keen sense of touch.

The UK-based charity RNIB (Royal National Institute of Blind People) has produced many materials written in Moon.

In case you struggled to decipher the message written in Moon font in the story, or if you want to check whether you worked it all out, the letter to Freddy said this:

A play ‘
Beyond The Fields
’ is based on this book. Anyone interested in performing this should contact the author via
www.johntownsend.co.uk
.