Jason Salkey - From Crimea with Love: Misadventures in the Making of Sharpe’s Rifles

This book is dedicated to my dad, my mum and my love from the Crimea.

M y first encounter with the Sharpe film crew was in Ukraine. I had flown from London to Simferopol (universally known as Simplyawful) with Muir Sutherland, one of the two producers of Sharpe Film, and we were accompanied by two actors joining the cast and a heap of equipment. At Simplyawfuls airport we were met by an interpreter, a minivan and a lorry. The latter was swiftly loaded with all the equipment, but three men in black leather jackets informed our interpreter that it could not leave the airport. Muir, sitting in the minivan, slid open a window and, in his stentorian Scottish voice, demanded to know why not. The interpreter, a scared and skinny young man, nervously informed us that the three leather-jacketed thugs were from the local mafia and were demanding a bribe.

It was long after nightfall and Muir was eager to leave. How much? he demanded.

A lot! the young interpreter stammered.

How much! Muir demanded again.

There was a pause. The interpreter plainly feared the wrath to come, but finally, in a tremulous voice, he managed to answer. Ten dollars!

Oh, for Christs sake! Muir roared, fished out his wallet and handed the interpreter a $10 bill. He slammed the window shut and then, as the interpreter carried the money away, yanked it open again. And I want a receipt! he bellowed. He got one, too.

So began a most extraordinary experience and one, I confess, I approached with some trepidation. All the amazing people who were in the Ukraine crew were there because of my creation, Richard Sharpe, which meant the ultimate blame lay with me. Besides, I had long had mental images of my characters like Sharpe, Harper, Hagman and Hakeswill, and now I would have those conceptions challenged by actors. I need not have worried. I was welcomed warmly by the film crew and, as I watched them perform, realised that far from clashing with my mental images they added extraordinary value to what I had imagined.

Yet, as Jason Salkey says, Rifleman Harris was not my creation. He was added to the Chosen Men by the production team and I suspect his name was taken from history. In August 1806 a young man called Benjamin Harris joined the 2nd Battalion of the 95th Rifles. He was a shepherds son from Dorset and, unusually, joined the army from patriotic motives. The Duke of Wellington, who knew his troops well, reckoned that most men joined from desperation: Some of our men enlist from having got bastard children, some for minor offences, many more for drink... and it really is wonderful that we should have made them the fine fellows they are. Harris was different. He had joined the Militia, the equivalent of todays Territorial Army, in 1803 with the ambition to serve his country, but the Militia did not serve abroad and abroad, of course, was where the army met Britains enemies, and so Benjamin Harris transferred to the 95th, where his ambition to fight for his country was amply rewarded. He served in the expedition to Copenhagen in 1807, then fought in Portugal at the battles of Obidos, Rolica and Vimeiro, had the misfortune to be in Sir John Moores army in the retreat to Corunna, and the even greater misfortune to be part of the Walcheren Expedition in 1809. He was invalided from the army in 1814 and took up the trade of cobbler, working as a bootmaker in Sohos Richmond Street.

He also left a memoir, one of the finest that emerged from the Napoleonic Wars, and reading Jason Salkeys memoir of recreating that war with the Sharpe Film unit I was struck by the similarities. Benjamin Harriss recollections are rife with descriptions of discomfort, bad food, sickness and wild, drunken celebrations. Welcome to Sharpe Film! The conditions under which they filmed the series were often atrocious, the food inedible and the hangovers constant, yet they succeeded in making episode after episode, and all of an astonishing high quality. Despite all the problems there was a dedication and determination which drove the filming onwards and Jason who, in Sharpes Havoc , I described as ever-cheerful, was an important part of that. He is, essentially, an optimistic and generous character who meets hardship with humour and he was richly rewarded by meeting the delicious Natasha in Ukraine. Lucky man! He also kept a diary which forms the basis of this book; an entertaining, ever-cheerful account of how a TV series is made.

I wish I had invented Rifleman Harris, though I am guilty of killing him off at Waterloo. I did incorporate him in the books after the film unit created him, and always saw Jason in my minds eye as I wrote him, just as I saw Sean Bean as Sharpe after I first saw him on film. Sharpe was lucky that so many brilliant actors came to recreate his adventures and I was fortunate to visit them in Ukraine, Portugal and Turkey. To me, an intruder on their sets, it still seemed a glamorous endeavour, though Jasons memoir offers a very different perspective. Yet, despite all the discomforts, I suspect Jason would echo Benjamin Harris, who wrote, I enjoyed life more while on active service than I have ever done since, and I look back upon my time spent in the fields of the Peninsula as the only part worthy of remembrance.

Bernard Cornwell

T he truth is that more than half of Sharpe wasnt shot on the Crimean Peninsula; Turkey, England and Portugal also provided backdrops for eight of the fourteen original episodes. However, in the end everything comes back to the Crimea. The Crimean Sharpe s are indelibly etched upon my mind for multiple reasons; first and foremost are the flesh and blood evidence of my three Crimean tours, my wife Natasha and our son Daniel. Secondly, the incredible bond the unit formed as a result of the adversity we faced in the early weeks and beyond of our inaugural foray into the Crimea. Lastly the freak injury to our lead actor that caused his removal from the role, paving the way for Sean Bean to take the part of Sharpe. Certainly, there were countless other tales and secrets I had no idea about, but from day one of my time on Sharpe I was determined to remember every twist and turn and to commit all to memory as I knew people would be astonished by what we experienced. I had always gravitated to non-fiction, documentary-style books, particularly the insiders take on things, so writing about my experiences shooting a film in the chaos of the newly disintegrated Soviet Union seemed appropriate.

Growing up in 1970s London I had ambitions either to appear on Top of the Pops , run out for Chelsea on Match of the Day or be a regular on stage and screen. In tandem with that superficial triumvirate was a desire to write a book, just like my novelist dad. My father, Andrew Salkey, was a poet, novelist, journalist and broadcaster. He moved to England from Jamaica in the early fifties, first becoming an English teacher at a London secondary school by day and nightclub manager by night while working on his desired profession: writing. Pretty soon he left teaching to be a freelance journalist/broadcaster for the BBC World Service, Caribbean section, moving on to having his first books published in the late fifties. He eventually settled in New England with a tenure at Hampshire College, a liberal arts school in Amherst, Massachusetts.

Creative writers in the sixties and seventies tended to be left leaning and my father was no exception. In the late sixties I remember going to a Soviet Union expo in Londons Earls Court; breaking the monotony of heroic tractors, tributes to socialism and sputniks were shouts of anger. I looked up to see two men daubing anti-Soviet slogans above the wall of a huge, shiny tractor exhibit. Why were these nasty people protesting against the heroic socialists of the Soviet Union? The walls of my dads study were lined with books and filled with Marxist-Socialist imagery: Cuba, the Soviet Union, Vietnam, Allende, represented in books, posters and magazines. We even had a Kremlin ashtray and a mini bag of sand from the Bay of Pigs. This was the household I grew up in as a young kid.