Re- Letter SA Saturday, March 1, concerning Chiseldon Camp murder.

EM Nathanson’s 1965 novel The Dirty Dozen, which was later made into a film of same name, opens with the tale of a convicted American soldier at Chiseldon Camp who is sent to Shepton Mallet military prison for the death penalty. I wonder did the author base his novel on a real life incident as seen in the Swindon Advertiser letter?

Or, as the informant does not reveal the source of information in the letter, was it possibly hearsay based from the novel or from its famous film?

I have some personal interest in First World War Chiseldon Camp. I arrived in Swindon in 1961 from London. I took my father who was visiting from North Wales round the countryside and when he saw Chiseldon Camp he immediately recognised he had been there before – it had been his WW1 embarkation place for Egypt and Palestine.

He and three brothers were in the Royal Welsh Fusiliers and one fell at Passchendaele, and the fourth brother in London Rifles suffered from inhalation of poison gas in France.

TE Jones, Fonthill Walk, Swindon