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    The Bridge: A short story
    The Bridge: A short story
    The Bridge: A short story
    Ebook42 pages29 minutes

    The Bridge: A short story

    By William E. Thomas

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    About this ebook

    A broken down truck blocking a bridge over the river in rural Holland leads to an unexpected encounter between a Dutch woman and an English holiday maker. Could this middle-aged, bearded man really be the young soldier she had fallen in love with when he dropped from the skies to capture the very same bridge 30 years ago?

    A heartbreaking love story set amongst some of the most brutal and devastating scenes of the Second World War written by a man who witnessed it all and lived to tell the tale.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherWilliam E. Thomas
    Release dateJul 21, 2012
    ISBN9780956229984
    The Bridge: A short story
    Author

    William E. Thomas

    William Edward Thomas was born in West London in 1925. He left The Brompton Oratory School when he was 14 and started work as a messenger at the BBC. When war broke out, his mother insisted he left central London and went to work with his father at a factory in Harrow. While still a teenager, William joined the army and was soon recruited in to the parachute regiment. By the time peace had been declared in Europe in May 1945, he had been “dropped” in to a number of key battles and become a much decorated soldier. He was still only 19 years old. Following the war, William served in Palestine until 1948. He has always believed passionately that education leads to opportunity. He has studied part time for both a Bachelor of Science and a Bachelor of Arts degree and was one of the first students to enrol with The Open University. William has six children. As they were growing up, he was working and studying in shifts as a merchant seaman and an engineer, working his way from factory shop floor to management. In his mid fifties, he decided to work full time as a lab technician at his Alma Mater, The Open University and remained there until his retirement. It was during his retirement that he decided to set himself the challenge of writing a novel. The Cypress Branches is the result. William's health started deteriorating shortly after finishing The Cypress Branches and he was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease in 2006. Shortly after the book's launch in the summer of 2009, his health deteriorated to the point where he could no longer live at home. He is now cared for at a home in central Milton Keyneswhere he is visited by his wife Sheila and family members daily.

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      Book preview

      The Bridge - William E. Thomas

      THE BRIDGE

      A short story

      WILLIAM E. THOMAS

      Copyright 2012 by William Edward Thomas

      Smashwords Edition first published in Great Britain in 2012 by Acute Angle Books

      The right of William Edward Thomas to be identified as the author of the work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

      Cover design by Mike Harris

      Cover image Copyright Milos Stojanovic, 2012

      Used under license from Shutterstock.com

      ISBN 9780956229984

      All rights reserved.

      This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold but may be given away to other people on the conditions that no commercial gain is made and that no alterations are made to it. If you would like to share this book with another person, please feel free to forward it to them, or refer them back to Smashwords.com so that they can download their own copy directly. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

      This book is a work of fiction. All names, characters, organisations, places and incidents are either imaginative or are used entirely fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons (alive or dead), organisations, locations or events is purely coincidental.

      PARENTAL ADVISORY: This book contains adult themes and occasional strong language.

      Table of Contents

      Foreword

      The Bridge - a short story

      About the author

      Pegasus Falling - Available now

      It Never Was You - Coming soon

      FOREWORD

      What you are about to read are the very first words written by William E. Thomas after he bought himself a word processor and decided to sit down and write a book. The year was 1992, he had not long retired and had become bored of the life of a pensioner.

      He called his first work simply ‘Opus 1’. I have given it a title which I believe befits it.

      Although Opus 1 was initially written as a standalone work, elements of it ended up becoming part of his much larger work, The Cypress Branches, which he started to write almost immediately after completing his first short story. Although it underwent a considerable amount of editing and the story was changed to integrate it into the longer storyline, some readers will recognise it as forming the basis of the first chapter of Pegasus Falling -

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