Vincent (ePub)

The Author's father, Vincent McCann, lived a more interesting life than his children could ever have imagined, the details of which he never spoke about, and took to his grave. Hence the title 'Vincent; The Long Silence'. However, all these details which had been kept secret, were finally uncovered when digitized records on the internet revealed his father's war time history, when he served with the 75th Field Company Royal Engineers, in the trenches of Flanders and the Somme during World War 1. The motivation behind writing the book, began with a visit by the author to Ypres in Belgium, a town that played a pivotal role in the war along the Western Front. A ceremony at the Menin Gate, which takes place every day honoring these brave soldiers, who, unlike Vincent , never returned home, generated the idea he should write about his father's contribution in this epic struggle between empires. The reader will be led from Vincent's past as a child in the gentle Irish countryside, through his young life working in the Belfast shipyards during the building of the S.S. Titanic, to his wartime experiences with the British Army in WW1. The reader will run a gamut of emotions from humor to pathos, describing the characters in his company's struggle to survive in what was a living hell. It embodies the courage and determination of the players, and of Vincent himself, as their lives are forever altered in this brutal conflict.