Aftermath: Travels in a Post-War World

by Farley Mowat

In the spring of 1953, Farley Mowat returned to Europe to retrace his wartime footsteps and search for peace. He returned to England and France - countries that less than a decade previously had been made weary under the weight of war. He returned to the nightmarish battlefields of Italy that had seen Canadian soldiers, his friends and comrades, fall in tragically high numbers. He wanted to see what the land - and its peoples - were like when the world was not a charnel house of mud, rain, metal and death. What he found was a world that was - after so many years of misery, tragedy, and destruction - overwhelmingly and energetically embracing life, nature and hope. Driving through Western Europe with his wife Frances, Farley Mowat begins his traveller`s tale. He meets former French resistance fighters who, when they learn that he`s a Canadian veteran, greet and fete him with food, drink and stories as if he were a long-lost brother. He sees San Carlo, an Italian town practically levelled as the site of a horrifying battle in the winter of 1944, rebuilt and teeming with life, as if risen from the grave. He meets people shaped and changed by tragedy and yet determined to move forward. They tell Mowat the stories only the inhabitants of a war-zone can stories of the evils of war and the courage, sacrifice and resilience of ordinary people. Farley Mowat also sees places still, but probably for the last time, untouched by the rapid "progress" of this last half century. In Kent, he is invited into a flagstone-floored Tudor brewery where, since the days of King Henry VIII, time and brewing methods have stood still. In Positano, a seaside fishing town where he spent some of his war years, Mowat watches firsthand as fishermen ply their trade as their ancestors did during the Roman Empire. Mowat paints an unforgettable portrait of ancient places on the cusp of unimaginable change. Travels in a Post-War World is vintage lively, moving, heart-stopping and beautifully told. (1995)

Genres: Travel, Nonfiction, Memoir, War, History, World War II, Canada

239 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1996

About the author

Farley McGill Mowat was a conservationist and one of Canada's most widely-read authors.

Many of his most popular works have been memoirs of his childhood, his war service, and his work as a naturalist. His works have been translated into 52 languages and he has sold more than 14 million books.

Mowat studied biology at the University of Toronto. During a field trip to the Arctic, Mowat became outraged at the plight of the Ihalmiut, a Caribou Inuit band, which he attributed to misunderstanding by whites. His outrage led him to publish his first novel, People of the Deer (1952). This book made Mowat into a literary celebrity and was largely responsible for the shift in the Canadian government's Inuit policy: the government began shipping meat and dry goods to a people they previously denied existed.

The Sea Shepherd Conservation Society ship RV Farley Mowat was named in honour of him, and he frequently visited it to assist its mission.

Reviews

[Owen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Farley Mowat has written a number of books which may be described as war memoirs. Since they were written at decent intervals and to some extent, for different purposes, there is a degree of repetition. Nevertheless, as there is hardly ever a dull moment in a text by Mowat, we can forgive him for telling the same story twice. To be honest, I'm no longer certain where the overlap occurs, although in "Aftermath," a book written comparatively recently, he certainly revisits some parts of the Italian theatre in which he served, and refers to the same events he has recounted in detail elsewhere ("And No Birds Sang"). But "Aftermath" doesn't dwell particularly on war, and there are a number of stories in this ongoing narrative which are worth reading by themselves. Scenes such as that where the author and his wife visit the Black Eagle somewhere in Kent and procure some of the Queen's Brew are classic Mowat. Their visit to Amalfi and tour of its ancient potteries, and their final return to England where they visit with Peter Scott, son of the Antarctic explorer, and learn all about the Severn Wild Fowl Trust, are just a couple of the highlights of this rather unusual journey.

This is not your ordinary Mowat, but then I'm wondering if there really is such a thing. An overlooked book, "Aftermath" won't disappoint, and fortunately for readers everywhere, thar's plenty more Mowat where that come from!

[Anthony Peter · Rating 3 out of 5]

This 1995 memoir by Farley Mowat records and reflects on Mowat’s 1953 tour of the places in Europe where he served in the Canadian Armed Forces during WW2. He and his wife, Fran, also take time to do some traditional sightseeing, ending up in Wotton-on-the-Edge in the Cotswolds visiting among other places the decaying, unfinished mansion of Woodchester House and the wildfowl reserve of Slimbridge, then under the management of Peter Scott.

My mother, a Nova Scotian, often sang the praises of Mowat, so, eventually, after many years, I’ve got around to reading something by him. I found the book serendipitously in a secondhand bookshop in Carnforth (where I also found a promising-looking travelogue by Mrs Tom Manning, ‘A Summer on Hudson Bay’). My younger sister, now living on Vancouver Island, says Canadians get a bit fed up hearing about Mowat. Be that as it may, I found ‘Aftermath’ interesting for three particular reasons.

The first is that Mowat’s accounts of what he did, encountered and endured during WW2 make for good reading. In part this is because we feel his discomfort in remembering them. After revisiting Ortona, where, among other horrors, he ‘spent some of the most terror-filled hours of [his] life being sniped at by a German 88mm gun,’ he can ‘tolerate the revival of no more such memories’, and his journey becomes more of a pleasure-seeking one. His narrative style is plain and clear, has a candour and honesty that encourages attention and sympathy, and is often punctuated with suppressed anger if he finds himself in the presence of someone – in one case a former Nazi - who has all-too-easily brushed aside the awfulnesses of the war. His account of what happened to the Résistance in Vercors is exemplary. He has strong views which he explains all the more effectively with a tight-lipped, laconic restraint. You wouldn’t want to argue with him.

Secondly, he can often be very funny in an understated way about, in particular, the British. Temperamentally uncomfortable in crowds, he finds London’s 1953 Coronation fever unbearable and makes off for mainland Europe as soon as he can. He and Fran do this in a brand new Hillman Minx convertible, which takes them all round Europe and up and down some of its most hair-raising roads. Have you ever seen a Hillman Minx? – how it served him so well is beyond me, and his driving must have been not only intrepid but also skilful and tenacious and above all courageous. Not many people will have attempted the Great St Bernard Pass – just to see the dogs - in a snow storm.

Thirdly, Mowat’s lifelong work in the environmental movement is given voice from time to time, and he makes the point by concluding his narrative in Slimbridge with Peter Scott with whom he gets on ‘famously’. I liked the infrequent references to his passion as they were the more effective, and made you reflect more than if he’d hammered you with a persistent diatribe. The end of the book unostentatiously gives the last word to this theme, and, moreover, gives it to Peter Scott. Whether Scott’s words are accurately recalled after 40 odd years or not, scarcely matters: the point is that unless we get it right with the environment, veterans of WW2 will be well justified in wondering if their misery and pain was all worth it.

I found the narrative a little uneven, lurching a bit between very readable recollection, anecdote and storytelling, and rather dull passages on getting from A to B. But what kept me going was that Hillman Minx and its connection in my mind – I was born in 1951 – to a world I just about remember that was still reshaping itself in the aftermath of the war in which there was, in the UK, a sense of deprivation, neglect, scrubby landscapes but also a sense that things could and would be better, though not quite yet. By contrast, in Europe as Mowat remembers it, alongside a similar sense of wearied malaise and battered desolation, he discovers, especially in Italy, a dynamism and openness at having come through it all, and a consequent joy in being able to enjoy life once again.

[Kathy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Farley Mowat is one of my all-time favorite authors, and he doesn't disappoint in this memoir/travelogue. In 1953 he and his wife traveled through Europe, retracing his steps taken during the war in order to write a regimental history for the Canadian military. At the same time he was hoping to find signs of peace and prosperity where there had been none when he had been there before. He described the sequence of events in a foreword, but I was disappointed that he didn't explain how he came to publish this "travelogue" fifty years later. Never mind, I enjoyed his reminiscences anyway. As usual, he beautifully describes the places and the people he meets, the untold stories he learns about, and his feelings about the changes he finds and the memories the trip brings back to him.

[Eden · Rating 5 out of 5]

2023 bk 293. A lesser known book by Mowat, this is the story of the young author and his wife's trip to Europe, touring the places he had been stationed or fought in during World War II - at less than ten years since the wars end, Mowat does have chance encounters with people of Europe he had met - civilians whose homes he had sheltered in, people who had been in the same fights he had. Through it all, he deftly paints a picture of places so badly decimated that he thought they would never recover, and some had not yet, while others had been rebuilt by the hands of the people of a particular village or place. A well written book, with very interesting glimpses of the lives of people recovering (1953) from massive war.

[Michael Kerr · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of Mowat's lesser known works, this memoir covers a trip with his wife, Fran, when they went to Europe in 1953. They visited old haunts known from his time with the PPCLI in WWII, and they explored some new areas as well, fuelled by Mowat's interest in the natural world. This is an odd book, in a way, in that it starts out as an amusing travel memoir, but is soon dotted with flashbacks of his time serving with 'the regiment.' Some of these remembrances and analyses are quite startling and gruesome, making for a strange literary mix. As always, however, Mowat's prose captivates.

[Bev Famulak · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a fabulous book! Farley knows how to keep his readers engaged from start to finish. History/war is not my usual genre of books but something about this book spoke to me. The details he used to describe the places he and his wife visited as he retraced his footsteps, made you feel like you were along for the ride. How he spoke about the war and the atrocities he witnessed had my heart breaking. Sharing this with his wife was probably very therapeutic for him, for both of them. What a beautiful story! Thank you for sharing, Farley!

[Mark Geisthardt · Rating 4 out of 5]

Farley Mowat served in the Canadian Army during the Second World War stationed first in England and then participated in the battles across Sicily and Italy. In this book he tells of his travels back to some of these places in the years following the war. He is a wonderful story teller and as he describes his and his wife's travels he brings these places to life and at the same time connects them with the events he had lived through less than a decade earlier. This is a very good read.

[Sheila · Rating 3 out of 5]

Farley Mowat served in Europe during WWII and in 1953, he returned with his wife to travel to some of the same places he had been to during that period. He discovered many of the same areas that were so ravaged during the war years were recovering and embracing life.

[Kathy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found this book in a used book shop. Didn't know it existed. I am a great fan of Farley Mowat's moving book 'And No Birds Sang'. Aftermath is an interesting punctuation mark to that book. What a gem this man is.

[Donna Herrick · Rating 2 out of 5]

A funky combination of travelogue and memoir.

[Tara · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very interesting - loved the path they travelled. Would like a map of it!
Great details of specific places - you can see yourself there and in the time.

[Peter B · Rating 1 out of 5]

If you think Farley is a great guy, then this is a travelogue worth reading. Otherwise not. Because it is all about Farley telling you what a great guy he is.

[John Lawson · Rating 3 out of 5]

A little personal memoir of a trip though post-WW2 Europe. More travelogue than deeper reflection.

[Vicki Martin · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am now a fan of Farley Mowat's adult books. This was the first for me. Recommend.

[Jeff Heal · Rating 5 out of 5]

I always like reading Farley Mowat's travels.

[Susan · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed reading this. I knew of Farley Mowat, but hadn't read anything by him. Thanks for giving me this book, Jen! Mowat and his wife take a trip in 1953, visiting some of the sites and battlefields of WW II where he served. I could have done with a little less of the story of Nazi atrocities in France and Italy, but in general it was interesting. I particularly liked reading about the places they visited in England (not related to the war, necessarily), including some Roman ruins, a grave barrow, and an abandoned mansion in a creepy village.

[Debbie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Great stories in the Farley style. Mowat and his exwife travel through England, France and Italy to visit sites he was stationed at during WWII. His bitterness was still quite evident, which I found understandable yet disturbing.

[Anna · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of Farley's great books that you need to re-read every so often.

[Rob Melich · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fun read, travel book with some personal reflection.