Yours as Ever, Sam: Based on the True Story of a Sometime Conman, Sometime WWII Hero by Mila Douglas
Today, I am delighted to welcome Aussie author, Mila Douglas, to History Imagined. I had the privilege of reading Yours as Ever, Sam prior to its publication and I highly recommend it! Sam is a hard to put down, terrific read!
From Mila Douglas:
Hello history enthusiasts!
I’m excited to share some behind the scenes details of my lightly fictionalised book, Yours as Ever, Sam.
For years, my father-in-law, James Douglas, told fanciful tales of his past. They echoed like fables, told over a drink with a flourish and a wink. For me, they evoked the whimsy of Tim Burton’s ‘Big Fish.’
James’ stories, though captivating, held inconsistencies, anachronisms, and elusive details. I so wanted some of his ramblings to be true, but imagined much of it was pure fancy?
By the time James Douglas passed away, I’d lost hope of pinning down the truth. Who was this man, and what secrets did he carry?
A couple of years on, after encouragement from my mother-in-law, I began a serious family history project. Despite hundreds of research hours, the purchase of multiple useless birth and death certificates, and the enlistment of a professional genealogist, the project was marked by dead ends. On paper, James Douglas did not exist.
A decade later, armed with fresh determination and the new tool—DNA testing—I picked it up again, My husband and his sister took tests through Ancestry.com. What eventuated was unexpected—rather than the anticipated Irish/Scottish roots most connections were of Russian and Polish origins—particularly among Ashkenazi Jews.
Messages sent to distant matches yielded silence and the virtual bulletin board which held my pinned queries remained unanswered. After six long years of nothing I decided to exorcise the mystery from my mind by writing a book. The Dancer at the End of His Bed, narrates the journey of sisters seeking their father’s identity. But that isn’t the story of my heart! A twist of fate followed the book’s completion—within days I received a response to my old bulletin board post.
Although the responder who knew little about my father-in-law gave me his real name. James Douglas was born as Cyril Solonsch. She then connected me to James/Cyril’s brother and his brother’s wife. The couple didn’t discover the existence of James/Cyril until after his death, but they had a treasure trove of information about his father, Samuel Solonsch—a man whose life rivaled a Hollywood blockbuster. Many of my father-in-law’s stories were recognisable. James had adopted some of his father’s adventures as his own.
I embarked on another journey through the research maze, but having the name Samuel Solonsch paved a clearer path. ‘Trove’, a digital repository of Australian history, became my focal point, revealing Sam’s presence in newspaper articles and police gazettes. They chronicled Sam’s deeds, both virtuous and nefarious.
From the WW2 War Diaries of Weary Dunlop to Daphne Jackson’s memoir ‘Java Nightmare’, accounts painted Sam as a man who used several aliases and was not to be trusted.
The layers of this complex narrative unfolded. Dunlop believed Sam to be a double agent who was feeding information to the Japanese occupying Java and running the POW camps. Jackson described Sam (an Aussie soldier) as wearing a German uniform and speaking German under the name Hermann Schmidt.
When the brother and his wife received a letter in Dutch, accompanied by a translation, informing them of the honour medal Sam had received for his work with the resistance, they were relieved and sought out other POWs who knew Sam to find the true story. They then set up and recorded interviews with POWs and ex resistance fighters. The information from these along with my father-in-law’s tales and other family anecdotes, proved extremely valuable in knowing who Sam really was. The common thread was his charisma and search for goodness.
Overwhelmed and overexcited by this mountain of knowledge, I researched events on the Australian army website, read accounts about the places and times during which he lived.
Then I sat on it all, daydreaming about Sam and attempting to make sense of his actions. The inevitable truth emerged—I had to write another book, this one a lightly fictionalised narrative more incredible than fiction.
To ensure historical accuracy I checked all family anecdotes against records of the time. One such anecdote about extremely tall Mormon hitchhikers travelling with Sam from Melbourne and being invited to stay with his family in Adelaide, set me researching the likelihood of these men actually being in Australia at the start of WW2. The timing aligned with a Mormon basketball tournament in Melbourne, so I included them in the book. Apparently Sam helped them preach in their church because their pastor had enlisted in the war. This and evidence of other religious flip-flops offered glimpses into Samuel’s search for the meaning of life.
If you’d like to join Sam on an extraordinary journey through time and ancestry, read the mostly true captivating tale of Samuel Solonsch: a sometime conman and sometime hero.
‘Yours as Ever, Sam.’
The book is available through Amazon:
Barnes and Noble:
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/yours-as-ever-sam-mila-douglas/1144363901?ean=9780645721652
Mila Douglas
Mila is a compulsive people-watcher who creates ridiculously detailed backstories. She now puts this annoying habit to good use and random people off the street live amongst the pages of her books.
Born in England, Mila spent her school years and early adult life in Western Australia before moving to Queensland. She claims the mountains in Cairns cradled her and called her home. Her husband refers to this as the time his wife got the urge to yodel.
Her home is surrounded by lush rain forest, but inside, two sad living pot plants gasp for their last breaths. Even her cluster of artificial plants have the cheek to lose leaves.
She has released three books. The Dancer at the End of his Bed, The Wolf at her Heels, and Yours as Ever, Sam. Two additional books have release dates in 2024.
Website: miladouglas.com.au
This sounds absolutely delightful! Mila, you obviously have a great sense of humor and a mischievous streak. I wonder what your husband thinks of the family past you’ve uncovered (and his mother, too)?
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