Real Life Characters

When doing research for an historical fiction novel, I often run across people who are just too good to be left to obscurity.  Two of those who went on to become characters in my novels were Sloan Gordon and Florence Farmborough.  Their names alone made them worthy characters.

Sloan Gordon

Deep in the bowels of the Dayton Metro Library reside hundreds of microfiche reels containing back issues of Dayton newspapers dating from the turn of the century.  I spent many nights and weekends squinting at blurry images researching the period covering my stories.  It was during a search of articles pertaining to the Great War that I discovered Sloan Gordon.  As near as I could determine Sloan Gordon was a war correspondent for Cox newspaper assigned to the Eastern Front.  A visit to the Dayton Daily News personnel archives failed to produce any further information.  Thus inspired by his name and his series of detailed dispatches from the Eastern front, I gave Sloan Gordon new life in Banners.

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"As a boy, Sloan Gordon had devoured Stephen Crane’s glowing reports from Cuba during the 'splendid little war' with Spain and later Jack London’s stories from the Russo-Japanese War.  Ever since, Sloan had seen nothing but a war correspondent in his future.  He envisioned himself in the front lines sending back dispatches of glorious victories and humiliating defeats.  His enthusiasm only increased when nine months ago, Cox sent him to follow in Jack London’s footsteps to Eastern Europe.  Others may have considered the Eastern Front a minor arena in the real war between Germany and France, but to Sloan it was a dream come true and the opportunity of a lifetime."

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Jack London

Sloan's article detailing the death of a young Russian sentry during a minor battle on the Eastern Front was the inspiration Sergei's first combat role since his battles on the Russian frontier.  In Sloan Gordon's prose, "the sentry was found the next morning stone dead, a pile of spent cartridges at his feed.  Upon examining the poor soul's corpse the Russian doctor declared the sentry had died of fright."  The details in Sloan's article substantiated the doctor's diagnosis.  In Banners' version of the battle, Sergei rallies a retreating Russian battalion and directs a heroic stand against advancing Austrian troops.  The unfortunate sentry's death is a result of that stand.

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1915 Article by Sloan Gordon

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Sloan Gordon appears in Banners as a war correspondent sending periodic dispatches back to the Cox newspaper company.  I used Gordon's style of writing to fabricate the events on the Eastern front and create a timetable weaving through the story.

In a 1915 news report, which appears almost verbatim in Banners, Sloan relays the story of the children orphaned or abandoned by the war.  These "wretched waifs" as he called them, were flotsam awash in a sea of misery.  The bezprizorniki (little ones without protectors from bez-without, prizor-protectors, niki-little ones) became the basis for a subplot in Slogans and morphed into the gang Stefan aspires to join.

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Sloan Gordon's article on the lost children

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Bezprizorniki

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"Sloan set down his pen and buried his eyes in the palms of his hands in hope to block out the images.  One could only write so much before the mind rebelled from the memories and refused to conjure up more.  Sloan Gordon had now seen the face of war and it was not glorious."