Soon after the beginning of World War I four British soldiers find themselves stuck behind enemy lines and unable to return to their units, they seek shelter in the French countryside hiding close to German troops just outside a French village.

They are soon discovered by the villagers of Villeret, a tiny village occupied by the Germans. The locals take the bold decision to shelter them in the barns and houses around the village, right under the nose of the enemy. Their uniforms are hidden, and the villagers provide peasant clothes so they blend in better, and they begin to settle into village life, even helping in the fields with the crops and harvest. Of the four there a natural leader emerges, Robert Digby, he comes from upper middle class society, even though he was a private in the war. He immerses himself in the village life so much he begins a passionate affair with a local girl, who soon falls pregnant, and in time give birth to a daughter.

The occupation of the village is harsh. The German army is very demanding of the resources of the village, helping themselves to all produce, emptying entire cellars of wine, demanding that all chickens provide a certain number of eggs a day, including cockerels. Soldiers going to and from from the front are billeted with the villagers too. It is a very harsh life. Soon it is discovered that there is a spy ring in the village, there is no direct link to the British soldiers, but it it thought that Digby might have know of it. The commander starts to ramp up the pressure on all the inhabitants to reveal everything that they have hidden.

Then one day they are betrayed. Three of them are rounded up fairly quickly, but Digby escapes. The captured men are 'tried' and sentenced to be shot the following day. Digby's location is revealed and he is caught and is put through the same trial and sentence. No one knows who is the person who is betrayed them, but the whole village turn out at the service the church. The commandant says that they are only allowed to lay one wreath per soldier, and the village responds by giving each of the men a enormous wreath each to spite him.

Macintyre has a way of bringing these historical stories to life. He has uncovered masses of dateline the life in the village at the time of the First World War, and using some artistic licence has made a readable narrative of their lives under cover. He has also looked at the evidence to see who it could have been that betrayed the men, partly to answer Digby's daughters question, but also to set the record straight. He has a list of possible suspects, and their motives, and reaches some kind of a conclusion given the evident that can be collected 100 years or so after the event.

It is a well written history of four men in World War i, the war where everyone suffered, and it does feel that a little bit of justice has been done. ( )

A brilliantly researched story of four British soldiers stranded in a small French village after the retreat of August 1914 and their time hiding from the Germans for almost 2 years. ( )

May contain spoilers.

A wartime romance, survival saga and murder mystery set in rural France during the First World War. Four young British soldiers find themselves trapped behind enemy lines at the height of the fighting on the Western front in August 1914; unable to get back to their units, they shelter in the tiny French village of Villeret. Living in daily fear of capture and execution, they are fed, clothed and protected by the villagers including the local matriarch, Madame Dessenne, the baker and his wife. The self-styled leader of the band of fugitives, Private Robert Digby, falls in love with the twenty-year-old-daughter of one of his protectors and in November 1915, with war waging a few miles away, she gives birth to a baby girl. The child is just six months old when someone betrays the men to the Germans. They are captured, tried as spies and summarily condemned to death. Using the testimonies of the daughter, the villagers, detailed town hall records and most movingly -- the soldiers' last letters -- Ben Macintyre reconstructs an extraordinarily story of love, duplicity and shame -- ultimately seeking to discover through decades of village rumour the answer to the question, 'Who betrayed Private Digby and his men?'

I have read this book for book group. This book is really is not my cup of tea. The reason being is that it is a factual book. I feel really bogged down with these types of books. I have read some of the book and have got a gist of the story and do know who betrayed the men. I would have enjoyed the book more had it been wrote as a work of fiction, or in letter and diary form. The characters then would have had their own voices and the book would have had some dimension to it. Factual books I find very flat. ( )

This is another book I would have been unlikely to have read unless I had been given it. Once again, it is more narrative non-fiction that history per se. It tells the story of four soldiers, members of the original BEF who were trapped behind enemy lines in 1914 during the retreat from Mons. In microcosm it tells the tale of the many men in similar positions although none appear to have suffered quite such an extraordinary fate.

Like many, they were sheltered by French villagers, only in their case was their fate stranger. Many of these soldiers did not last long – the villagers, believing the threats of the occupying Germans (often with good reason) handed them over, or the soldiers themselves surrendered. But not our four. They survived until May 1916 when they were eventually betrayed and shot as spies. This isn’t giving away anything – it’s on the blurb on the cover of the book.

What I found with this book, even more than with the Janet Morgan I reviewed recently, is that it reads almost like a novel. While these soldiers were real people, they are treated like characters in a plot, and the narrative as if it were a tragedy complete with hero and fatal flaw. The only problem I have with this is that it is being presented in some objective sense as ‘true’ when in fact it’s nothing of the kind. It’s very readable, and very sad, but I’m not sure that it’s history. ( )