Men, Women and Guns

Here is a war book like no other. Sapper served in the trenches of the Great War, and he brings you there not with propaganda or horror, but with something rarer: the absurd, sideways look of a man who survived by laughing. These stories crackle with the black humor of soldiers who find comedy in command, romance in the oddest places, and courage that looks suspiciously like stubbornness. The first half offers sharp, self-contained tales of life in the Royal Engineers, each one a small gem of observation and wit. The second half follows Jim Denver through the meat grinder of Ypres and the Somme, a man whose greatest battle is keeping his sense of self intact when everything around him is being blown to kingdom come. Sapper writes with the knowing eye of someone who has seen it all and refuses to pretend it was noble when it was mostly bloody and ridiculous. This is war as the soldiers actually lived it: terrifying, funny, human, and unforgettable.