The Mad Minute Myth

The Mad Minute Myth

These notes are the result of of my research into the Mad Minute; this was prompted by statements, on internet forums and in various Youtube videos, that the claimed record, of 38 rounds fired in one minute by a Sergeant Snoxall is a myth, in that the accuracy claimed is incompatible with the rate of fire.

  Although one would expect an increase in the rate of fire to cause a corresponding reduction in the accuracy achieved, the question is whether the 37 or 38 hits claimed as the record in the Mad Minute practice is plausible, whether it is within human abilities, or whether it is an impossible fabrication, as some have claimed.  

THE 'MAD MINUTE' PRACTICE

Mad Minute was a slang term, originally used in the pre-WW1 British Army, to describe shooting practices that were intended to exercise shooters in accurate, rapid firing and reloading during one minute, using the standard Short, Magazine Lee-Enfield (SMLE) bolt-action service rifle.

The ‘Mad Minute’ description was used for Practice number 22, Rapid Fire, detailed on page 252  of ‘The Musketry Regulations, Part I, 1909 (reprinted with amendments 1912)’. This gives the details as 15 rounds rapid fire, aimed at a “2^nd Class Figure” target at 300 yards. The practice is described as ; “Lying. Rifle to be loaded and 4 rounds in the magazine before the target appears. Loading to be from the pouch or bandolier by 5 rounds afterwards. One minute allowed”.

In the 1914 reprint, this practice was changed to “Lying. Rifle unloaded and magazine empty until the target appears. Loading from the pouch or bandolier by 5 rounds afterwards. One minute allowed.”

  The Musketry Regulations were a 312 page handbook on the service rifle, marksmanship principles and training.   You can download a copy of the booklet here; some of the scanned text is difficult to read.

  There is no contemporary source that states that Practice number 22 was colloquially known as the ‘Mad Minute’, but the essential elements (15 rounds, one minute) are present. It is unlikely that  the instructors at the School of Musketry would have demonstrated a practice that was not amongst the many listed in the manual.

The dimensions of the Second Class Figure Target are given on Plate 36 of ‘The Musketry Regulations, Part  II, Rifle Ranges and Musketry Appliances, 1910”. The target was 4 feet square, with 24” and 36” circles.  The aiming mark was a 12” x 12” silhouette representation of the head of a firer aiming a rifle from a trench.

There was no 12" bullseye.

The 15 rounds in one minute was the standard required for a rifleman to qualify for additional pay as a first class shot. An experienced rifleman could fire many more rounds in a minute. 

Rounds hitting within the 36” diameter circle at 300 yards range would be fired to an accuracy of 11.46 minutes of angle (MOA). 

  Getting all the rounds within the 24” inner circle, as credited to Sgt Snoxall, would be an accuracy of 7.64 MOA.

There is an MOA calculator here.

SNOXALL, WALLINGFORD AND MAPP

 The only known reference to the record of 38 rounds fired by Sgt Instructor Snoxall is contained in a footnote to page 57 of "Superiority of Fire" by Major C. H. B. Pridham, published by Hutchinson's Scientific and Technical Publications, London (1945). 

"Sergt.-Major Wallingford's original Hythe record of 36 rounds in 60 seconds with the S.M.L.E. rifle stood until about 1914; when Sergt.-Instructor Snoxall fired 38 rounds in one minute, at 300 yards, with all his shots in the inner ring. This probably stands as a world's record for a hand loaded rifle. In each case, the target used was a 4 ft figure target, with a 12 inch figure 5. Lower half of the target was coloured green or brown, upper half grey or green. The bull's eye figure was coloured brown. Since 1925, C.S.M.-Instructor C. Mapp, on numerous occasions, has fired 35 and 36 rounds in one minute, with all his shots in the inner ring at 300 yards range."

'Superiority of Fire' by Major C.H.B. Pridham
Page 57, showing the footnote that mentions Sgt. Snoxall

Pridham had been an instructor at Hythe before WW1. The 'inner ring' mentioned was 24 inches in diameter; the "12 inch figure 5" was the 12 inch x 12 inch silhouette aiming mark.

 A 12 inch bulls-eye is often mentioned in connection with the Mad Minute practise. It seems that the claim that all of Snoxall's 38 rounds had hit a 12" bulls-eye was an error in Ian Hogg's book  ‘The Encyclopedia of Weaponry’. This version has since become a firmly-established internet myth, changing Sgt. Snoxall's impressive achievement into a super-human, Terminator-like feat of  speed and accuracy. For some reason, the forename 'Alfred' has also been frequently attached to mention of Sgt.-Instructor Snoxall, which has only served to cause further confusion to the many people who have attempted to find his WW1 service records.

 It is sometimes suggested that the 38 rounds per minute was  WW1-era British propaganda. This seems unlikely, given that the only reference to Sergeant Snoxall's record was published in 1945, after both WW1 and WW2 had ended and near the end of the service life of the Lee-Enfield rifles with the British armed forces. It seems to me more likely that Pridham had probably known Snoxall, Mapp and Wallingford. 


THE 'MAD MINUTE' DEMONSTRATION

It will be apparent that, when he fired the alleged record, Sgt. Snoxall had not been firing Practice No 22 from the Musketry Regulations, which only allowed the firer to use 15 rounds. It is unlikely that the Army would have permitted shooting contests that used 30 or more rounds in a minute, due to the cost of the ammunition and the accelerated wear of the rifles' barrels. 

  In order to show what Sgt. Snoxall had been doing, it is necessary to quote the relevant pages (54 to 58) from Chapter VI of 'Superiority of Fire' in their entirety.

SUPERIORITY OF FIRE   Page 54

HYTHE ENTHUSIASTS

It was left to a few enthusiasts, at the School of Musketry, Hythe, to agitate -- against strong opposition at the War Office--  for an increase in machine-guns to meet the fast approaching German menace.*  The blame for the refusal to comply with this urgent request must rest between the Army Council and permanent officials at the Treasury of those days. The former were not interested; and the latter refused to recommend the extra expenditure, so comparatively small, for the purpose.

Of these enthusiasts, Major (local Lieut.-Colonel) N. R. McMahon, D.S.O. †  Royal Fusiliers -- Chief Instructor at Hythe, from 1905 to 1909 -- was the most prominent. While German opinion was still doubtful as to the correct application of machine-gun tactics, a lecture of far-reaching consequences was given before the Aldershot Military Society, on December 18th, 1907, by Lieut.-Colonel McMahon. His lecture,” Fire Fighting “, laid down the tactical principles in accordance with which machine-guns should be used.‡  His ideas, later on, were embodied in our Field Service Regulations and Training Manuals.

  So anxious was the German General Staff to obtain further information on the subject, that, while the Regulations were still in draft form, they were communicated to the German Military Attaché in London, in exchange for “other official information.”  Thus they reached the German General Staff, who embodied them into their own Field Service Regulations.

  One result of the South African War of 1899 to 1902 had been that the Boers had taught us the value of straight shooting with the rifle. Influenced by this experience, Colonel C. Munro -- Commandant at Hythe, from 1903 to 1907-- had started a musketry revival. His policy was to improve generally the musketry of the Army. All officers of infantry and cavalry regiments of the Regular Army were required to attend a course of instruction at the School of Musketry. To each class in 1908, the Chief Instructor gave a memorable lecture. He explained how his continued agitation to arouse the Army Council to supply the Army with machine-guns in adequate numbers had met with no response.

In view of the increasing German menace, the situation for Britain — as McMahon saw it— was becoming desperate. Each battalion of infantry had only two Maxim guns, of a heavy and out-of-date pattern. With these it would be impossible to obtain superiority of fire. “What can we do?” he asked. “We must look to our past military history, and fall back on traditions now six centuries old. We must aim at producing the same superiority of fire with our rifles, as we had obtained with the long-bow in the 14th century. Our traditions of rapid and accurate fire,” he reminded his audience, “ date back nearly 600 years.” He was referring to the Battle of Crecy.“There is only one alternative left to us,” McMahon maintained. “We must train every soldier in our Army to become a ‘human machine-gun.’ Every man must receive intensive training with his rifle, until he can fire—with reasonable accuracy—fifteen rounds a minute.” This proposed rate of fire was more than double that of our own, or of any other army.

 McMahon was a man of rare vision. He foresaw, in effect, six years ahead to the fighting at Mons, in August, 1914. The small British Regular Army, when compared with the huge conscript armies of Europe, was wholly inadequate. McMahon visualised the divisions of a British expeditionary force as outnumbered by ten to one. Machine-guns, each of them with a fire-power equivalent to that of fifty men — a great economy in man-power — could have gone far to solve the problem. Yet the Treasury—like Li Hung Chang, of China, but with infinitely less excuse—regarded the extra expenditure for providing additional machine-guns as unnecessary, and refused to grant the money. The Chief Instructor painted a picture of what would happen to the few British divisions in France, when confronted with vast hordes of German infantry armed with the latest pattern Maxim gun in enormous numbers. Following his lecture, he staged a demonstration on the Hythe ranges, which opened the eyes of everyone who witnessed it.

THE HUMAN MACHINE- GUN

  Sergt.-Major Wallingford, an expert marksman, proceeded to show what the S.M.L.E. rifle was capable of in the way of rapid fire, at 300 yards. Not 15 rounds only, but as many as 36, were fired off in 60 seconds, timed by a stopwatch. **  Of these, a large proportion of hits on the target were found to have hit the bull’s eye, with the remainder in the inner ring and a few outers, but no misses.

Here was startling proof of the possibilities, hitherto undreamt of, of rapid rifle-fire. The number of rounds fired in one minute depended on the skill, and speed, of the individual firer in loading and reloading chargers of five rounds each into a magazine holding ten. By its easy manipulation of the bolt, the S.M.L.E. rifle was well adapted for such extremely rapid firing. By contrast, the bolt of the German Mauser rifle worked very stiffly, so that it was not capable of rapid firing. But the Germans, with ample supplies of Maxims, had no need to train their men up to a high standard of musketry. McMahon’s new Musketry Course, which included also snap- shooting at targets exposed for a few seconds only, was introduced into the Army in January, 1909. A compromise somewhat typical of our nation, it was calculated to cost considerably less than an ample supply of machine-guns would have done. This new musketry, at first, met with much disapproval and distrust  but, as time went on, the Army gradually grew accustomed to this much higher standard of efficiency.

THE “MAD MINUTE.”

 By about 1910, any soldier who could not fire his fifteen rounds a minute was put hack for extra musketry drills, muscle exercises, and range practises. By 1912, men who were graded as third-class shots were liable to be discharged from the army for inefficiency. By 1914, many men in each regiment could exceed even twenty rounds in the “ mad minute,” and very high scores were made in firing the fifteen rounds practice of the annual course. H.P.S. (Highest possible score)  was 60, and scores of 50 and over became almost commonplace. By now, every trained soldier in the Regular Army could fire his fifteen rounds per minute, many of them with astonishing accuracy.

  Thus McMahon’s highest hopes were realised. So insistent was he of the importance of intensive training in “rapid and accurate fire” ***  during those few critical years prior to the ouitbreak of war in 1914, that he was irreverently referred to as “The Musketry Maniac”!

*  “ In 1909, the School of Musketry, Hythe, urged that each battalion should have six machine-guns, instead of two. The suggestion was declined for financial reasons, and subsequent reductions of the Army Estimates and Vote made any such addition impossible.” (Official History of the Great War, France and Belgium, 1914.)

†Fourth son of General Sir T. Westropp McMahon, who served in the Crimean War. Born 1866, joined the Royal Fusiliers in 1885. Awarded the D.S.O. for his services in the South African War.

‡ During his lecture on “Fire Fighting,” Lieut.-Colonel McMahon stated “Machine-guns will be used in the near future in very large numbers. There need be no fear of overstating the value of these weapons. All tendencies in modern tactics . . . bring their good qualities more and more into relief.”

**"Sergt-Major Wallingford's original Hythe record of 36 rounds in 60 seconds with the SMLE rifle stood until about 1914; when Sergt-Instructor Snoxall fired 38 rounds in one minute, at 300 yards with all his shots in the inner ring. This probably stands as a world's record for a hand loaded rifle. In each case the target used was a 4 ft figure target with a 12 inch figure 5. Lower half of the target was coloured green or brown, upper half grey or green. The bull's eye figure was coloured brown. Since 1925 CSM Instructor C Mapp on numerous occasions has fired 35 and 36 rounds in one minute with all his shots in the inner ring at 300 yards range".

 ***  “There can really be only one rate of fire – the best rate for every man for combining rapidity with accuracy.”

On the occasion that Sgt Snoxall achieved his record, he had been demonstrating the speed and accuracy with which the standard issue Short, Magazine, Lee Enfield (SMLE) rifle could be fired,to a group of army officers. It was not a shooting contest. The ordinary soldiers of the British Regular Army were not expected or trained  to fire at such speeds. Since the intention was to demonstrate the maximum possible rate of fire, it seems likely that the rules of Practice No 22 were not applied, e.g., the firer may have started with 10 or 11 rounds in the rifle, charger clips were arranged to hand rather than kept in the ammunition pouches, etc.. There are no records, the details of how the record was fired is not known. 

STANGSKYTING

 A video, of the Norwegian National Rifle Association field shooting contest known as Stangskyting (Stang shooting), has been used to Youtube to try to mythbust the Mad Minute 'Myth'.

 Stangskyting was introduced by a Colonel Georg Stang in 1912. The contest is partially funded by the Norwegian defence ministry and is screened on Norwegian national television. The contest is fired using historic and current service rifles (Mausers, Krag-Jorgensens, H&K G3) and also the Sauer 200 STR (Scandinavian Target Rifle).

  There are many similarities between Stangskyting and the Mad Minute practice, probably because both were intended to develop the skills of accurate and rapid firing that would be required to counter the same threat, advancing German infantry formations. Videos of modern-day Stangskyting are the best means available to assess the plausibility of the Mad Minute claims, since they are a rapid-fire contest  using bolt-action rifles which mostly date from the pre-WW1 era.

  In Stangskyting there are two separate sequences in which the shooters fire at a target for 25 seconds. The first target (called a 1/4)  is a diagrammatic representation of a prone figure, the second (called a småen) is a representation of a human head.

  The 1/4 target is 33 cm high by 49 cm wide and is used at a range of 200 to 250 metres.

 The småen target is 30 cm high by 25 cm wide and is used at a range of 130 to 170 metres.

  A Youtube poster, USMarineRifleman0311,  stated that the småen target is “approx 20in by 30in”  (76.2cm high by 50.8cm wide); he has got that wrong as well.

MODERN MAD MINUTE EVENTS

The comparison below (between Mad Minute scores of 36-38 rounds and modern Stangskyting shooting) was intended to assess whether the rates of fire and accuracy achieved in the Mad Minute scores were realistic.

This comparison was rendered redundant by a Mad Minute Challenge, held at a shooting club at Sokendal in Norway on 30th May 2015. The winner, Thomas Heøgåsseter, scored 36 hits on a 40 cm diameter target at 200 metres (6.9 MOA/ 2 mils). The average score of 11 shooters was 29.

 Mr Heøgåsseter's achievement has proved definitively that the Mad Minute scores attributed to Snoxall,  Wallingford or Mapp are plausible. I have left the text that I originally posted as a comparison of Stangskyting and the Mad Minute claims below as a matter of interest. 

RATE OF FIRE

In this video, Krag vs Mauser vs Sauer vs (a)g3, between 2:50 and 3:20 and Mr Mauser fired 14 rounds in 25 seconds (average 33.6 rpm). However, if you deduct the 6 seconds that it took him to clear the stoppage, then he fired 14 rounds in 19 seconds, an average rate of fire (RoF) of 44.2 rounds per minute.

My best estimate is that he took 2 seconds to load each 5 round charger, firing 14 rounds in the 15 seconds of actual shooting time or about 0.933 seconds per round.

IF he could sustain this RoF for 60 seconds, THEN he would fire the initial 5 rounds in 4.66 seconds, and each of the 8 subsequent 5 round clips in 6.66 seconds, total 58 seconds.  45 rounds fired.

In the same video, between and 4:25, Mr Sauer fires 16 rounds in 25 seconds (he started with a round in the chamber and 5 in the magazine), roughly equivalent to 38 rounds per minute. The rate of fire of the Mauser shooter is more relevant since his rifle is of the correct era and uses faster charger reloading.

The precise rate of fire is unimportant; the only relevant point is that Mr Mauser could plausibly achieve a rate of fire in the region of 40 rpm. The 38 rpm (Snoxall) or 37 rpm (Wallingford) claimed in respect of the Mad Minute by School of Musketry instructors is entirely plausible. The bolt-action of the Short, Magazine, Lee Enfield (SMLE) British service rifle was generally acknowledged to be faster than any of the other bolt-action rifles in service with European armed forces.  

ACCURACY

The Mad Minute  rate of fire seems possible, but the question remains as to whether the firer could maintain sufficient accuracy at this speed.

I estimated Mr Mauser’s group size (by scaling the measurements from a screen print) was 43.6 cm wide. If you assume the range to be 150m, then that group was fired within 10 minutes of angle. The group excludes 2 shots that missed the target. Mr Sauer’s group size of 33.2 cm is relevant, an impressive accuracy of 7.61 MOA, again assuming a range of 150 metres.

 Again, both the 11.46 MOA accuracy (Wallingford) or 7.64 MOA (Snoxall) claimed for the Mad Minute seem plausible.

  The standards for both accuracy AND the rate of fire attributed to pre-WW1 School of Musketry staff are comparable with the standards that are achieved by the top competitors in Stangskyting events. This does not prove that the 38 or 37 rpm records are genuine,  it merely suggests that these scores are within human abilities and therefore plausible.

  You can interpret the above information in any way you please.

 The points supporting Snoxall’s, or Wallingford's, records are that;

·           The SMLE action was faster than any contemporary bolt-action rifle.

 ·          Snoxall, Wallingford and the other School of Musketry instructors were not merely good marksmen, such as those that compete in the Stangskyting events. They were professional shooting instructors, responsible for training the unit instructors, they trained with free-issue ammunition and they were selected from an army of trained marksmen.

·      There were no formal records of the Mad Minute scores maintained, since it was not a formal shooting contest. It was merely an exercise that was intended to develop shooting that was both rapid and accurate. It was an informal contest,  carried on at  company and battalion level and did not involve competitors travelling to national events at Bisley or similar ranges.

·     Wallingford and other members of the Hythe School of Musketry staff did compete in Bisley contests and were regular winners of the Gold, Silver and Bronze Jewel competitions.  

 SERGEANT-INSTRUCTOR SNOXALL

    For many years the 'Sergt.-Instructor Snoxall' mentioned by Major Pridham seemed to have vanished from the records leaving no other trace of his existence. Many doubted that he had ever existed. 

    In 2017, Nick Harlow published a paper ('The Mad Minute, Rapid Rifle Fire and its place in the Edwardian Army) which mentioned a Frank Snoxell as probably having served as a Sergeant-Instructor at Hythe. There were several mentions of his name  listed in the London Gazette following his promotion to a 2nd Lieutenant in January 1917.

       In 2019 I obtained a copy of Frank Snoxell's army records from the National Archives at Kew. This confirmed that Frank William Snoxell had been a Sergeant-Instructor at the School of Musketry at Hythe from October 1913 until he was promoted to CSMI in March 1915.

      Frank Snoxell had enlisted at Preston 31/10/03, was promoted sergeant on 26/10/10, transferred to the School of Musketry on 29/10/13, appointed SI on 30/10/13, promoted to CSMI on 13/3/15, QMSI 13/11/15 and commissioned as a 2nd Lieutenant on 13/1/17 when he was posted as an Assistant Instructor to the 2nd Army Musketry Training Camp in France. He retired as a Major in 1921 and died in September 1956. 

     

    Prior to his posting to Hythe, Frank Snoxell had served as a Sergeant-Instructor at the Branch School of Musketry at Salara in India. The British Indian Army had its Central School of Musketry  at Pachmarhi and Branch Schools at Satara and Rawalpindi/ Changla Gali. This would also explains why Snoxell (unlike Wallingford, Mapp, etc.,) has no known competitive shooting record; any competitive shooting he'd done prior to being posted to Hythe would have been in India.

    Jesse Wallingford, unlike the good Sergeant Snoxell, left many records of his shooting prowess. He competed in rifle and pistol events in the 1908 Olympic Games and won the Gold Jewel (Best Shot in the Army) at Bisley on 5 occasions. 

Notes on ‘Heroes’ by Robert Cormier

 My son is reading Heroes by Robert Cormier for his English GCSE examination.

 I read the book. I thought I’d make a few notes about some of the events in the novel, the significance of which may be overlooked by the average 16-year old.

  I’m not a teacher; I haven’t studied this book, so my interpretations may not be right.  However, I have the advantage of age and know lots of random stuff relevant to this book. I’m sure I’ve missed other significant points.

I have assumed that you’ve read the book; be warned that these notes contain spoilers that will tell you how it ends. The page numbers alongside each quotation refer to the Longman edition of the book I have used. You may find some unexplained quotes; these are ones for which I will write an accompanying note if/when I get around to it.  This is a work in progress, I’m not sure that I will finish it, but I hope the notes that I have made prove useful. 

CHAPTER 1;

P1  Frenchtown in Monument. Frenchtown is an enclave of people of French descent. Most of the characters’ names are of French origin (Cassavant, Lasalle, LaFontaine, Richelieu, Marie La Croix, Touraine, etc..  They would probably be the children or grand-children of French-speaking French-Canadian immigrants.  Cormier’s name,  is also French.

Frenchtown is based on Cormier’s real-life home town, Leominster In Massachussets, USA.

  Leominster has an area called ‘French Hill’, where French-Canadian immigrants had settled, a park/common called Monument Square, a Spruce Street (Ch 14) and a Mechanic Street (Ch 3)..

Frenchtown is a thinly disguised version of Leominster. It’s possible that the characters and events in the novel are similarly based on real-life.

P1 ‘That’s the way he pronounced it; arse.’

 An American would usually say ‘ass’.  Dr Abram’s use of the British pronunciation is not explained, most probably he had served in hospitals in England during the war treating the casualties from the US Army Air Force and ( after D-Day) US Army ground troops.

P2 Red Sox cap. A Boston Red Sox ( US baseball team) baseball cap. Boston is the nearest large town to Frenchtown/Leominster, about 40 miles away.

P3 Three decker;  triple decker  house with 3 floors.

The French Hill area in Leominster ( and the fictitious Frenchtown) has blocks of triple decker houses. It is a distinctive type of 19th and early-20th century  housing that is common in Massachussets. A family would be housed on each floor. There is a balcony (piazza) at the front of each floor which provides an outdoor area and also shades the windows in summer. 




 The term "three-decker" originally referred to a man-of-war sailing ship with three gun decks.  The three-decker houses originated in the ports of New England, on the east coat of the USA and would have originally housed sailors and dock workers living near the ports.

P4 Damaged by the grenade  The injuries Cassavant describes would be unlikely to result from a hand grenade, although it’s not impossible Grenades usually contain a small amount of high explosive and cause injury by the fragmentation of the metal casing.  Anyone suffering such facial injuries would probably also have been blinded.

Major General John Frost (commander of 2^nd Battalion, Parachute Regiment in WW2 )  in his autobiography  described a withdrawal through German lines from a position in North Africa at night, leading an injured man whose face was held on with a field dressing, having had it virtually severed by a shell fragment during an artillery bombardment.

 Artillery and mortar shells contain much more explosive than hand grenades and the shrapnel fragments generally have more energy.

P6         Later, I light a candle in St. Jude’s church....

A votive candle,  “To "light a candle for someone" indicates one's intention to say a prayer for another person, and the candle symbolizes that prayer. A donation box intended to defray candle costs generally accompanies votive candles.”
   He does not light the candle because it is dark in the church; this was an idea I found expressed on the internet, although that would be a reasonable assumption, if you didn’t happen to know much about Catholicism. 

P6 St Jude’s Church. The local parish church in Frenchtown. .

 St Jude is the patron saint of hopeless causes,  'The Saint for the Hopeless and the Despaired', There is no St. Jude's church in the real French Hill.  Cormier could have chosen a name from amongst hundreds of saints and picked St. Jude; he would have known of the association.

P6 The smell of burning wax and the fragrance of old incense, the odours of forgiveness, fill the church. I remember the days.....

  Smells have the power to bring to mind emotional memories associated with those smells.  The smells in the church bring back memories of Cassavant's childhood.

The powerful memories evoked by an odour are the subject of Rudyard Kipling’s poem Lichtenberg.

Smells are surer than sounds or sights
To make your heart-strings crack--
They start those awful voices o' nights
  That whisper, " Old man, come back! "
That must be why the big things pass
And the little things remain,
Like the smell of the wattle by Lichtenberg,
Riding in, in the rain.

P6 ........the days I served as an altar boy for Father Balthazar and the Latin responses I had trouble memorizing.

 The Roman Catholic mass was said in Latin until 1967.  A Catholic priest is usually addressed as ‘Father’.

Frenchtown is Catholic; this is important.

 P6 ... Rub Room of the Monument Comb Shop  Leominster/ Frenchtown was the centre of an industry manufacturing combs and was nicknamed ‘Comb City’. Combs had formerly been manufactured by sawing slots in strips of animal horn or, later, celluloid. They are now made cheaply from injection moulded plastics. The  Rub Room was a workshop where the final polishing processes were carried out using abrasive polishing wheels.

     You opened the door of the rub room at the comb shop and a blast like purgatory struck your face. The workers sat on stools, huddled like gnomes over the whirling wheels, holding the combs against the wheels to smooth away the rough spots. The room roared with the sound of machinery while the foul smell of the mud soiled the air. The mud was a mixture of ashes and water in which the wheels splashed so they would not overheat at the point of contact with the combs. Because the rub room was located in the cellar of the shop where there were no windows, the workers toiled in the naked glare of ceiling lights that intensified everything in the room: the noise, the smells, the heat, the cursing of the men. On the coldest day of the year, the temperature in the Rub Room was oppressive: in the summer, unbearable.

Robert Cormier ‘Fade’

P6   Nicole Renard;  another French name.

Renard means fox. In American,  WW2-era slang, fox meant a sexually attractive woman.

 P7   “Great strides have been made in cosmetic surgery, Francis. One of the few benefits of the war.”

The USA had entered WW2 2¼ years after the UK. During that time, the UK had become a centre of expertise in innovative plastic surgery usually used in treating facial burns.

See the Guinea Pig Club (patients of Archibald McIndoe) or ‘The Last Enemy’ by Richard Hilary (a Spitfire pilot severely burned during the Battle of Britain in 1940).  Dr Abrams would  probably have acquired  his knowledge of cosmetic surgery and English pronunciations in English hospitals.

P8  Silver Star  A US medal awarded for gallantry in action, the third highest US  military decoration.

Chapter 2

P10   St Thérèse of Lisieux;   Marie-Françoise-Thérèse Martin (1873 to 1897) a French nun and catholic saint. St Therese lived only 50 years before this story is set and so, unlike most saints, there are photographs of her. Francis Cassavant is familiar with these images. St Therese would have been especially venerated amongst the Frenchtown Catholics because she was French. St Therese at 13 years of age, about  the same age as both Nicole Renard and Francis Cassavant when they first meet.

P10     Seventh grade                   The 7^th years of school for children of 12 to 13 years of age.

P10      St Jude's parochial school.....

Parochial is an adjective which means 'relating to a Church parish.'
St. Jude's school is adjacent to St. Jude's church and is managed  by the parish.
 Some of the teachers are nuns who live in the adjacent convent. Their teachers' salaries are paid by the state and are paid to the convent.   

P11.     .....on the third floor of our house        In the UK the street level of a building is  called the ground floor. In the USA the street level is called the first floor; so the “third floor” is what a UK reader would call the ‘second floor’, or the top floor of a triple decker house.

P12         ....players from the shops                        i.e., workshops, factories

 P12.           ....the men drinking beer they had brewed in big crocks.  The sale and production of alcoholic drinks was illegal in the USA between 1920 and 1933. Home brewing became popular during the prohibition and continued afterwards. This incident occurs in about 1938, after prohibition has ended. The Frenchtown residents are poor, working people and home brewed beer is cheaper than bottled beer or buying beer in a bar.

P13         ...how selling Babe Ruth to the Yankees had brought a curse upon the team.

George Herman “Babe” Ruth (1895 to 1948), the most famous baseball player of all time.

 Babe Ruth’s contract had been sold by the owner of the Boston Red Sox to their rivals, the New York Yankees, in 1919. The reasons for the sale aren’t known, it is believed that the Red Sox owner needed money for another business venture. Babe Ruth’s sale so outraged Red Sox fans that Cassavant’s father is still regularly complaining  about it some twenty years later.

  Imagine the outrage if Manchester United had sold David Beckham to Liverpool in the early years of his professional career.

Chapter 3        A CONVERSATION WITH NORMAN ROCHELEAU IN FRANCE

P18         ‘.....he told me about the family’s sudden departure from Frenchtown. More than that; ‘All kinds of rumors about her, Francis. She began to stay at home, didn’t come out of the house except for the five-thirty morning mass, the nuns’ mass, that nobody else in their right mind ever goes to. She was like ...’ he gestured with the cigarette, trying to find the right word.’......A hermit. Then she was gone. Her and her family. Left Frenchtown without telling anybody. ‘

• All kinds of rumors about her, Francis.  People in Frenchtown were gossiping about Nicole Renard and her family’s sudden disappearance.
• She was like ...’ he gestured with the cigarette, trying to find the right word.’......A hermit. Then she was gone. Her and her family. Left Frenchtown without telling anybody. ‘
  Nicole Renard’s unusual behaviour ( acting like a hermit) is not explained here, nor is the sudden disappearance of her family from the town. 

Frenchtown is a small catholic village within Monument, everyone knows everyone else, everyone knows the priest, the teachers and the doctor.

Norman Rocheleau has no direct knowledge of why Nicole Renard’s family left Frenchtown; everything he has heard is hearsay, gossip. He does not say what the “all kinds of rumours” were, it would be distressing for Francis to hear those stories.  

Nicole Renard’s unusual behaviour ( acting like a hermit) is not explained here, nor is the sudden disappearance of her family from the town.

 

  One possible explanation is that, if Nicole Renard had been raped by Larry LaSalle, then she may have become pregnant. This is never mentioned, but It must have been one of the possibilities considered by Francis Cassavant. It is an 'elephant in the room', throughout the book.

  Nicole’s behavior, and the sudden disappearance of her family may have been the result of her being pregnant because she, and her family, were devout Catholics.

The doctrine of the Catholic Church is that a human life begins at the instant of conception and that a termination of a pregnancy, an abortion, is a homicide, even if the conception is the result of a rape. It is the teaching of the Church that the unborn baby is a victim of the rape, as much as the mother, and its life should be protected.

You may disagree with this view, but the important point here is that Nicole is a devout Catholic, as are her parents, the priests, the nuns, her doctor and anyone else in Frenchtown to whom she may turn for help. They share this belief.  If Nicole Renard was pregnant, she would not get an abortion.

 It would have been a great disgrace for the family if an unmarried daughter had become pregnant; it is still in many cultures. The Catholic Church would often arrange accommodation for unmarried mothers, where they could have the baby away from their home towns, and then arrange to have the baby adopted or fostered.

  What might have happened  (it is never explicitly stated) is that Nicole had become  pregnant and had avoided meeting people in case they should notice. If her parents had supported her, then, when it became impossible to conceal Nicole’s pregnancy, the entire family would have left Frenchtown, without telling anyone the reasons, and moved to an area where they were not known. Nicole would be accepted as a single mother, without the associated social stigma, if she were to pass as the widow of a serviceman. Her parents may have raised the child, whilst she completed her secondary education (see Chapter 15), rather than have it adopted.

  The evidence against this  is in Chapter 16, when Francis finally meets Nicole again; she does not mention a child and Francis does not ask. She also says that she never told her parents about the rape. It is possible that she did not have a child, but this does not adequately explain the sudden departure of her family from Frenchtown. The alternative explanation is that she has a child but she does not want Francis to know that. 

Nicole had not made a complaint to the police that Larry LaSalle had raped her because she thinks it unlikely that she would be believed. Larry LaSalle is the local hero. A criminal case against LaSalle would have resulted in a trial, with all the details in the local papers.

If she had become pregnant, then it would have been her word against LaSalle’s that he was the father. DNA had not yet been discovered.

 P22         GIs in my platoon

      A GI is a member of the US Army or the US Army Air Force. The initials originally referred to all Government Issue equipment and has come to mean US service personnel.

  A platoon is a small infantry unit, usually of about 32 men, commanded by a 2^nd Lieutenant assisted by a platoon sergeant. A platoon is usually organised into 4 sections, or squads, each of 8 men. The entire platoon would be deployed as a unit and is small enough that all the men would soon know one another.

P23           Two German soldiers in white uniforms.

  The German soldiers had white coveralls and helmet covers that were worn when there was snow on the ground. The Germans had previous experience of winter warfare from fighting in the USSR.

 The US Army did not have any similar equipment; the GIs' green uniforms made them  conspicuous targets against snow.

CHAPTER 4

P26         Land mine

P26         Furlough          (pronounced fur-low)  Leave of absence granted to a serviceman. The word has been rarely used in the UK since WW1.

P27         St. Jude’s club   A social club owned and operated by the parish. The parish council ensures that no immoral or illegal activities (e.g., gambling) take place on the premises  and the profits from the club are used for the benefit of good causes within the parish.

P27         Don’t Sit Under the Apple Tree A popular song during WW2, the most famous version being the recording by Glenn Miller and the Andrews Sisters.

P28         Big Boy, who weighed about three hundred pounds before entering the service...

21 ½ stones or 136 kilograms.

 The average man’s weight would have been less than 200 pounds. Big Boy had been overweight before he joined the armed forces.

P28         ...piece work at the shop...  A method of employment in which the worker is paid for each piece of work produced or each work process performed. The worker does not have a guaranteed weekly wage and may have no income if the employer has no work for him.

Piece work was widely used in the garment industry, with a fixed rate paid for each component piece (sleeve, cuff, collar, back, etc.,) of a garment manufactured and  another amount paid to another worker for each complete garment assembled. 

P28         GI Bill

The Servicemen's Readjustment Act of 1944  ‘known informally as the G.I. Bill, was a law that provided a range of benefits for returning World War II veterans (commonly referred to as G.I.s). Benefits included low-cost mortgages, low-interest loans to start a business, cash payments of tuition and living expenses to attend college, high school or vocational education, as well as one year of unemployment compensation.’

P29         I’ll be with you in Apple Blossom Time

 

CHAPTER 5

P31      ...municipal programme

P31         ...quick gulps from hidden bottles...

            Drinking alcohol in a public place is illegal in most parts of the USA.  It is a common practice to conceal opened bottles of alcohol inside the brown paper bags that are available from liquor or grocery stores, so that the bottle cannot easily be seen by police officers. 

P32         Marx Brothers movies

P32         empty lots

P34         yardman

P34          Autumn Leaves..... dying cowboy

P35        ...born in Frenchtown...

P36       ...didn’t remind me of St. Therese

 P37        ...who died on a beach on Iwo Jima in the South Pacific....

CHAPTER 6

St. Cecilia's Church, Leominster

P38  St. Jude’s Church at the corner of Third and Mechanic...
St. Cecila’s Church stands on the corner of Third Street and Mechanic Street in Leominster. The town probably now looks very different to how it looked after WW2, when it was an industrial town. 

P38 ..whether the mystery of what has happened to Nicole is hidden within those walls...

Francis suspects that Nicole might have entered a convent to become a nun.
  See also Chapter 15.

P38      The talk now is of the new Chevvies and Fords coming from the Detroit factories ....

Chevrolet  is a trade name used by General Motors in the USA; Chevrolet cars are nicknamed Chevvies.  General Motors also trade under the brand names of Vauxhall Motors (UK), Opel (Europe), Holden (Australia) and Daewoo.

   Chevrolet and Ford were the major US motor manufacturers; both are based in Detroit, Michigan.  Detrot was the centre of the US motor industry and was nicknamed Motor City or Motown.

  Manufacturing industries in the USA had been massively expanded to supply war materials. At the end of the war, production efforts had been changed from  war materials to consumer goods. There was a post-war economic boom, which, for the blue-collar working people,  meant that jobs were plentiful and wages were high. This was almost the exact opposite of the economic conditions before the war, during the years of the Great Depression.  Many manual workers were able to afford a new family car.

  Since the 1970s, motor manufacturing in Detroit has greatly declined, due to the 1973 Oil Crisis, competition from European and Asian manufacturers, multi-national manufacturers relocating factories to countries with lower labour costs and the automation of many manufacturing processes. The population of the city has decreased by 60% and Detroit has the highest unemployment rate of the big cities in the USA. The City of Detroit was declared bankrupt in 2013 and large areas of the city are a post-industrial  wasteland, with many abandoned houses and factories.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decline_of_Detroit#Population_decline

http://www.marchandmeffre.com/detroit/index.html

P38      Arthur and Armand and Joe are always there, fixtures in the club until they become cops or firemen....

The ‘52-20 clause’ in the GI Bill allowed provided veterans with payments of $20 per week for 52 weeks whilst they looked for work.

  Arthur, Armand and Joe are probably living off the $20 per week allowance from the 52-20 clause of the GI Bill, but none are actively seeking work or pursuing their stated ambitions of becoming cops, firemen or teachers. They are not functioning. 

P41         ...but only the Silver Star is for heroism. For gallantry.

 The Strangler meant that the Silver Star was the only medal awarded to the ‘Frenchtown Warriors’ for heroism. All the other awards detailed in his scrap book were for outstanding service.

 While there were other US awards for gallantry  (Congressional Medal of Honor, Bronze Star, Distinguished Flying Cross, etc.,) no Frenchtown resident had won such an award. 

CHAPTER 7              TABLE TENNIS AND THE TOURNAMENT

P43         Happy Days are Here Again

P43          ‘You have a natural athletic gait.’ He spelled out the word. ‘G-a-i-t.’

  Gait is a word which may not be in the vocabulary of many 15 year olds. Larry La Salle spelled the word out to ensure Francis did not misunderstand or take the word for ‘gate’.

P47         Dancing in the Dark.

P 54     7 December 1941

     Sunday 7^th December 1941 marked the beginning of the USA’s involvement  in World War 2. On that day, the Japanese Imperial Navy made a surprise attack on the US naval base at Pearl Harbor in Hawai. The Japanese had hoped to destroy the United State’s Pacific Fleet, which was at anchor in the harbour. The attack used bombers, torpedo bombers and escorting fighter aircraft which were launched from 6 aircraft carriers. Five midget submarines were also used, these being launched from conventional submarines 12 miles from Pearl Harbor.

  Four US battleships were sunk, 188 aircraft were destroyed and 2,403 Americans were killed.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attack_on_Pearl_Harbor

  There had been no prior declaration of war by the Japanese; Japanese diplomats were still engaged in talks with the USA. Public opinion in the USA was outraged at the Japanese duplicity.

The attack on Pearl Harbor marked the start of a Japanese offensive throughout the Pacific. The Japanese began an invasion of the Philippine Islands on 8th December. At that time, the Philippines were occupied by the United States, although independence had been planned for 1943.  The US armed forces had numerous bases and  airstrips in the Philippines.

 On 8^th December 1941, within eight hours after the attack on Pearl Harbor, the Japanese began attacks on the British colonies in Hong Kong and Malaya, again without any prior declaration of war against  the British. Great Britain and the USA declared war against Japan on 8^th December.

  Germany and Italy had made an alliance with Japan in 1940, the Tripartite Pact, which committed the three nations to provide “one another with all political, economic and military means if one of the Contracting Powers is attacked by a Power at present not involved in the European War”.

Although they were not obliged by the wording of the agreement to declare war on the USA, (since the United States had not attacked Japan) Germany and Italy declared war on the USA on 11^th December 1941.

  Until 7^th December, the USA had been neutral and there had been strong opposition to US involvement in the war in Europe. Within 4 days, the USA had become involved in the wars in both the European and Pacific theatres and there was overwhelming public support for the war. 

CHAPTER 8              FRANCIS FINDS ARTHUR RIVIERE DRUNK

P55... his lips turned downwards like the mask of Tragedy high above the stage at the Plymouth.

Masks were used in ancient Greek dramas as an aid to portraying the emotions the actors were expressing. The pair of Comedy and Tragedy masks are a common plaster decoration in theatres and the image is often used as a decorative motif in scripts or any  literature associated with the theatre.  

CHAPTER 10

P64 London had always been linked in my mind with foggy days and evenings...

London suffered frequent winter smogs (smoke and fog) until 1962. Most domestic heating was by a coal fire in each room and the smoke emitted by thousands of fires could linger in the city for weeks in still, cold  weather conditions. Smogs do not occur now due to Clean Air Acts  (legislation allowing only the use of smokeless fuels in cities), the widespread use of gas-fired central heating and, since the 1970s, the use of natural gas from the North Sea .

http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/education/teens/case-studies/great-smog

P65 Eisenhower jacket

A US issued military jacket, the ‘Wool Field jacket M-1944’ also known as the Ike jacket, named after  General Dwight (Ike) D. Eisenhower. The Eisenhower jacket was a short jacket with a belted waist introduced by General Eisenhower, the commander of the Allied Forces in Europe. Eisenhower intended that the jacket could be worn as both a parade uniform and in combat, so reducing the number of different uniforms required for the huge armies recruited by the USA during the war. The design was loosely based on the British battledress blouson. 

CHAPTER 13                    FRANCIS OVERHEARS A CONVERSATION AND DISCOVERS LASALLE’S ADDRESS

P83         They are talking in French.... Mrs Belander and her neighbour, Mrs Agneaux are probably first generation French Canadian immigrants whose first language is French.

P84         ‘The green house, cheap paint, bought discount, fading already.....’

Building timber is cheap (compared with the EEC) in North America and Canada, due to the vast areas of forests.The cheapest method of constructing small buildings was to use a timber frame with timber weather-board cladding on the outside.

The three-decker houses in Frenchtown are of timber construction. The external weatherboarding  needs to be repainted regularly.

Comparable artisans’ terraced housing, built during the same period in the UK, were built of brick, with a slate or tile roof, since this was the cheapest construction method in the UK.

Mrs Agneaux has noticed trivial details of her neighbours’ lives, knows when the house was painted and criticises the work in gossiping with Mrs Belander.

 Very little goes unnoticed or escapes the gossips in Frenchtown. 

COVER ILLUSTRATION  

The cover illustration isn’t a part of Cormier’s novel, so this won’t be mentioned in an examination; this is just another  couple of bits of random information. 

The medal in the illustration is the Purple Heart, a medal awarded to US service personnel who are killed or wounded on active service.

 500,000 Purple Hearts were made in anticipation of the casualties that would result from the planned invasion of Japan in 1945, an event that was avoided by the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and Japan’s surrender. That stock of Purple Hearts is still being used.

The flag is a folded US Stars &Stripes. In the USA a military veteran is entitled tom a military funeral; the flag on the coffin is folded in this manner by the bearer party and handed to the Next of Kin. The flag is usually kept folded, as a memento of a lost family member.

 Few of the fatalities in WW2 were repatriated, since they did not then have jet aircraft.  The book is about the lives and deaths of returned, wounded veterans.

 The uniform seems to be a Vietnam-era (early 1960s) camouflage uniform. SFAIK the only camouflage uniforms used in WW2 were those issued to the German army (the Wehrmacht), the Waffen SS and the Denison smock issued to British & Commonwealth airborne forces. The photographer probably didn’t know or care much about WW2 uniforms.