144
Mr Dominic Sharpe
Outward appearance
Old soldier in green camouflage jacket and blue jeans, hiking books, tartan beret with a regimental badge on the side. Red beard streaked with grey. Matching scarf. He looks pudgy, persnickity, gruff.Inside information
An unemployed Munchausen, who imagines he was a soldier. On his way to the Imperial War Museum, where he talks to visitors about his wartime experiences at the Battle of the Bulge. If challenged by a foreigner for being too young to have served in World War Two (Dominic is 55 years old), he pretends to think they are German and yells xenophobic abuse at them. If they could not be taken for German, (for example, black Americans) he thanks them for being too kind, and says that he is sure he looks every one of his 77 years.If challenged by a Brit, he winks and admits he is an actor paid to enliven the exhibit. This is also untrue but it is close to what he tells himself -- that he is an unpaid display. Then he asks for money.
Has just sold his volume of wartime memoirs for an undisclosed sum.
What he is doing or thinking
Fuming over the size of the advance. The book took years to write, the product of bitter experience. The incompetence of his commanding officers, the heat, the dust, the loss of young life. The book will blow the lid right off the scandal of that fiasco. What do they know about it, snug in their publisher's offices? What happens if they ask him for proof he was there?
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