"A tale of immense stature. Stirring, ambitious and profound, this is storytelling at its very best" Stuart Wavell, Sunday Times
In August 1914 four young British soldiers find themsilves trapped behind enemy lines at the heitht of the fighting on the western Front. Unable to get back to heir units, they are sheltered in the tiny French village of Villeret by locals. The leader of the band of fugitives, Private Robert Digby, falls in love with the daughter of one of his protectors; the following year, with war raging a few miles away, she gives birth to a baby girll. The child is just six months old when someone betrays the men to the Germans. They are captured, tried as spies, and shot by firing aquad.
Using the testimonies of the villagers, the dauthter and the soldiers' last letters, Ben Macintyre reconstructs one of the great untold true stories of the First World War.