When the introduction of a book describes the author as “nearly as good a specimen as ever worshiped Mars”, you know you are in for a book which not only describes the day to day life in the trenches of World War I, but also a perspective from a warrior who went on to symbolize the ideal for the inter-war philosophy of the “heroic struggle” which so motivated many of the youth of Germany after the war and led to the rise of Nazism.



