041501 Sunday Mirror

April 15, 2001
The Sunday Mirror
Dougray's New Star Role Is...Four Years in a Cupboard
by Andrew Bushe

Scottish actor Dougray Scott is to star in a multi-million pound film telling a remarkable tale of First World War endurance.

Dougray, 35, has been picked to play soldier Patrick Fowler who escaped being shot by the Germans by hiding in a kitchen cupboard for nearly four years.

Dublin-born Fowler, a trooper in the 11th Hussars, had become detached from his regiment during fighting in northern France in 1914 and was given sanctuary in the home of a French family.

When a troop of German soldiers was billeted in the house, he was bundled into the cupboard that was to become his home until the village was liberated in 1918.

Now his story of endurance is being turned into a pounds 4 million movie called Close Quarter starring Mission Impossible 2 baddie Dougray, from Glenrothes, Fife.

Arrangements to start filming in France in September are being finalised at Shepperton Studios, near London, by producer Bill Shepperd.

He was attracted to the tale by the bravery of all the central characters. "It's a fantastic story,'' he said.

"I think it is terrific because it shows the dignity of the human spirit and guts and courage."

Fowler survived by hiding in woods for several weeks before being found by a local man and brought to the home of his widowed mother- in-law Marie Belmont-Gobert and her daughter Angele.

Despite having little to spare, the women took him in and gave him food and shelter in their home in the village of Bertry.

During the time he was hidden, Fowler could not sit or stand because the cupboard was so small.

He crouched motionless inside in the darkness and watched the German officers through a hole in the door.

He was fed with leftover scraps of food whenever the coast was clear and he could only stretch his muscles at night.

He also suffered from a constant fear he would be discovered.

Another soldier who got lost with him was found hiding in a garden shed in 1915 and was shot.

By coincidence, it was Fowler's own regiment that re-took the village. The dishevelled soldier with an Irish accent initially baffled them and they thought he was a spy. The story of the heroism of the two French women and the Dubliner's years of terror in the cupboard didn't emerge until 1927.

When it did, the Lord Mayor of London gave the French women a civic reception and they were awarded the OBE.

A huge public collection was arranged for them and the British War Office paid them the billeting rate for soldiers of two shillings a day for Fowler, backdated to 1914.

Fowler had married before the war and his wife presumed he was dead and was living on a widow's pension.

When they were re-united, the couple - who had three daughters - moved to the Glenernie Estate, Inverness, where he died aged 90 in 1964.