Casemate Classic War Fiction Series

The original translation of one of the first World War I novels—at first criticized for its harsh realism but now celebrated as a classic. Set in early 1916, Under Fire follows the point of view of an unnamed foot soldier in a squad of French volunteers on the western front. It combines soaring, poetic descriptions with the mundane, messy, human reality of soldiers living in their own filth. Gradually, names and features are given to the men who emerge from the mud, from the dignified leader, Corporal Bertrand, to the ebullient Volpatte and the obsessive Cocon. Intermingled with details of how the men navigate daily life in the putrefied atmosphere of the trenches is a political, pacifist argument about this war and war more generally. Caught up in events they cannot control, the soldiers go through their daily routines: foraging for food, reading letters from wives and mothers, drinking, fighting in battle, and, in harrowing scenes for which the novel is noted, discovering dead bodies in advanced stages of decomposition. Through it all, they talk about the war, attempting to make sense of the altered world in which they find themselves. Under Fire (originally published in French as Le Feu) drew criticism at the time of its publication for its brutal detail, but went on to win the Prix Goncourt, a prestigious literary award that Henri Barbusse—a World War I soldier who wrote from vivid, painful experience—shares with renowned authors such as Marcel Proust and Marguerite Duras. Here, the original translation by William Fitzwater Wray, which first appeared in 1917, captures both the intensity of the story and the essence of the era. A glossary is also provided.

This World War I novel is “a mystery as exciting as a good detective story and an extraordinarily vivid account of trench-warfare” (The Sunday Times). In November 1918, as the Germans are in their final retreat, a British raiding party under fire follows the sound of piano music and stumbles across an eerie scene in a ruined chateau. A German officer lies dead at the keys, next to a beautiful woman, also deceased, in full evening dress. But what makes their discovery especially strange is that the man is the spitting image of G. B. Bretherton, a British officer missing in action. This tale of mystery and identity, first published in 1930, is not only an authentic account of the brutal conditions at the battlefront, it’s also a remarkable thriller with a twisting, unusual plot that earned it comparisons to John Buchan and the best espionage writers. The Morning Post called it “one of the best of the English war novels”—while Sir John Squire, the influential editor of the London Mercury, went a step further and labeled it “undoubtedly the best.” Eric Ambler, the iconic author of such classics as A Coffin for Dimitrios and Journey into Fear, considered it one of the five best spy novels of all time. Fans of war stories and suspense novels alike—and readers of modern WWI tales like Robert Olen Butler’s The Star of Istanbul—will find themselves caught up in this lost gem from the Great War era.

The novel that inspired John Ford’s The Lost Patrol: A band of World War I soldiers fights to survive in the desert after their leader is shot and killed. There had been, here, eleven men. Now ten rode away. . . . In the Mesopotamian desert during the First World War, an unseen enemy guns down the leader of a British parol. The officer was the only one who knew their orders, and he did not told anyone else where they are located. Now the sergeant must lead his men through a hostile desert landscape full of invisible Arab snipers. One by one, they are being picked off, and the group of diverse men with different backgrounds must try to come together in order to survive. The decision-making process proves far from easy as tensions and prejudices from their former lives come to a head. The basis for films by Walter Summer and John Ford, this bestselling novel is a suspenseful tale of the Great War for readers of Robert Graves or Ford Madox Ford—or anyone who enjoys an action-packed war story. Author Philip MacDonald, who served in Mesopotamia with the British cavalry, went on to become one of the most popular writers of thrillers and detective fiction.

Two World War I classics: The story of a British soldier enduring the battle in France and a novella starring a man who takes drastic steps to escape the Great War. The million British dead have left no books behind. What they felt as they died hour by hour in the mud, or were choked horribly with gas, or relinquished their reluctant lives on stretchers, no witness tells. But here is a book that almost tells it. . . . Mr. Gristwood has had the relentless simplicity to recall things as they were; he was as nearly dead as he could be without dying, and he has smelt the stench of his own corruption. This is the story of millions of men—of millions.” —H. G. Wells In The Somme and its companion The Coward, first published in 1927, the heroics of war and noble self-sacrifice are completely absent, replaced by the gritty realism of life for the ordinary soldier in World War I and an unflinching portrayal of the horrors of war. Written under the guidance of master storyteller H. G. Wells, they are classics of the genre. Based on A. D. Gristwood’s own wartime experiences, The Somme revolves around a futile attack during the 1916 Somme campaign. On the battlefront, Tom Everitt is wounded and must be moved back through a series of dressing stations to the General Hospital at Rouen. Few other accounts of the war give such an accurate picture of trench life, and The Spectator praised Gristwood’s “very effective writing,” calling The Somme “a book which anyone who was not in the War should read.” The Coward concerns a man who shoots himself in the hand to escape the chaos during the March 1918 retreat—an offense punishable by death—and is haunted by fear of discovery and self-loathing. Together, these works offer a vivid, immersive view of the First World War and the suffering it inflicted on the men who fought it.

After killing a fellow officer, a British World War I fighter joins the ranks of deserters and outlaws in a suspenseful novel from the author of Bretherton. Behind the Lines follows army man Peter Rawley, who accidentally kills an overbearing, taunting fellow officer and, terrified that he will not receive a fair hearing amid the chaos of the trenches, flees the battlefield. Now a fugitive, Rawley must join forces with other deserters, criminals, and lost soldiers in a hand-to-mouth existence, trying to survive in the no-man’s-land between opposing armies. He will encounter both adventure and disaster, including capture by the Germans and the threat of a firing squad—and will need to call upon his own bravery and the support of the woman he loves to survive. A thriller from the author of Bretherton: Khaki or Field-Grey?—which was praised by the Sunday Times as “a mystery as exciting as a good detective story and an extraordinarily vivid account of trench-warfare”—this is a meditation on the issues of identity and allegiance, as well as the role of chance. Behind the Lines is a classic of WWI fiction and an exciting read that brings the drama of the Great War to life.

A moving novel of one Englishman’s experience as his country goes to war, from the author of who gave us The Time Machine and The Invisible Man. Mr. Britling considers himself an optimist. But as the Great War begins, he finds himself forced to reassess many of the things he thought he was sure of. As refugees from Belgium arrive in the town of Matching’s Easy, telling frightening tales of what they have seen, Mr. Britling sees men dressed in khakis everywhere he looks. and his family’s tutor, a German, is forced to return home. Then comes the change that scares him the most: His own son, Hugh, only seventeen, enlists in the Territorials, the British Army’s volunteer reserve. Day by day and month by month, Britling observes the unfolding events and public reaction to the war as his ordinary life is shaken in ways large and small. As Wells’s characters try to keep their bearings in a world suddenly changed beyond recognition, Mr. Britling must wrestle with outrage, grief, and attempts at rationalization as he resolves to “see it through.” Whether science fiction or not, H. G. Wells’s stories always reflect deep human truths. Written in 1916, when the outcome of the conflict was still uncertain, this is both a fascinating portrait of Britain at war and a rare inside look at H. G. Wells himself, as Mr. Britling was a largely autobiographical character.

An “extremely atmospheric and poignant” novel of wounds that never heal and lives forever scarred by World War I (Books Monthly).   They’re called Whistlers—residents of a German hospital who have all been wounded in the throat, and whose every breath is punctuated with a high-pitched whistle.   One young soldier, Pointner, has no hope for recovery. His only solace comes from the British sniper’s cap he keeps as a trophy. Fellow casualty Kollin clings to the belief that he will be whole again. When an unlikely comrade joins them in the ward—the Englishman Harry, similarly injured but separated by allegiance—they find themselves bound, beyond the countries and crowns that have forgotten them, not only by their wounds but also by their common humanity.

From a World War I veteran: A novel of the years-long, brutal battle at Ypres, Belgium, and what it did to the city and the men who fought there. In 1915, a platoon of inexperienced British soldiers arrives in Flanders, excited and anxious for what is to come. But they soon find themselves at Ypres, where the battle-weary Allied troops have dug in and slaughter surrounds them. Soldiers, from privates to senior officers of the wider battalion, frozen by terror and overwhelmed by the relentless stress as the battle drags on, want nothing more than to hide. Young, dedicated officer Freddy Mann is in the thick of it with his men—burying the dead, experiencing the terror of bombardment, and being picked off by snipers. On a journey from idealistic officer barely out of school to battle-hardened cynic barely hanging on as those around him are cut down, Mann suffers a crisis of faith as he loses his belief in the war and everything he once stood for. Written by a WWI veteran, Pass Guard at Ypres brings to life the harrowing realities of the Great War, portraying years of lengthy fighting in—and the pivotal strategic role of—the ancient and once-peaceful town on the bank of the Ieperlee River.

A Frenchman flees his small mountain village to avoid service in World War I in a thoughtful, witty novel about the conflict of patriotism and conscience. Deep in the Cévennes Mountains of southern France, a man called Roux refuses to heed the call to duty at the outbreak of war in 1914. Instead, he flees and hides in the hills, returning only occasionally to the farm where he left his mother and sisters. The people of the valley condemn his desertion and hope the police will find his hideout and force him into the army. Then, as the months and the years go by, and the horrors of the trenches become known, the locals begin to understand Roux’s actions—but it is only at the end of the war that his fate will be decided. In an atmospheric and often witty novel of life during wartime in a rural French community, André Chamson explores the questions of perception and morality, as well as the roles we play in the great historical events of our times.

The horrors of World War I continue to haunt two veterans on holiday in 1930s France in this “stirring” novel (Books Monthly).   In the War to End All Wars, Charles Pagan and Dick Baron fought side by side and survived the slaughter. Over a decade later, they return to France not as soldiers but as tourists, taking a serene walking holiday through the Vosges Mountains.   But their idyll soon turns dark when they stay at a remote country guesthouse. The locals are secretive and frightened, breaking their silence only to warn the visitors against visiting an old battlefield nearby. Having seen many such fields under fire, Pagan and Baron consider such apprehensions nonsense—until one night when Pagan thinks he’s glimpsed an apparition on the moonlit battlefield . . .

A World War I soldier is torn between his duty, his country, and his conscience in this work of “classic war fiction” (Books Monthly).   When the First World War broke out, Apostol Bologa left his home in Romania and joined the Austro-Hungarian army with grand visions of battle, glory, and honor. Instead, the young officer finds himself serving on a near-perfunctory tribunal that sentences deserters and other reprobates to hanging in a small dark forest just behind the Eastern Front.   At first Bologa performs his duties with staunch military bearing, but the weight of the dead slowly begins to toll on his mind and spirit. For as his fellow soldiers are being cut down by the thousands on the battlefields, his only contribution to the effort is killing men one by one for reasons that grow ever more foreign and dubious—until he finds himself lost in the very forest of the dead he helped grow . . . with little hope for his own salvation.