Under Fire: A Squad's War

It begins with a squad of ordinary French soldiers resting in a rain-soaked village - filthy, lousy, exhausted men who look more like lumps of mud than soldiers. From their dugouts, their fatigues, their long nights under bombardment, and their shouted jokes, Henri Barbusse's narrator lets us live the First World War from inside the earth, alongside Corporal Bertrand, Volpatte, Poterloo, Lamuse, and the rest of the squad. The men endure lice, rats, corpses, and the random cruelty of shells; they march up the line, bury their friends, and finally go over the top in an assault that costs them nearly everything. Under Fire is one of the most honest and revolutionary war novels ever written - a cry from the trenches that still has the power to shock. This faithful modern retelling keeps its humor, horror, and humanity in vivid, present-day English. Part of Timeless Classics.