The Ghost of the Trenches and Other Stories from the First World War

As the Great War raged, and in its aftermath, people created hundreds of legends and stories round it, to speak of the sadness, the heroism, the deaths. Author Helen Watts and storyteller Taffy Thomas bring together this compelling, moving collection of ghost stories and mysteries from both sides of the conflict, from the haunted U-boat to the ghost of the trenches. On a hot summer afternoon in 1944, SS troops wiped out an entire French village. 644 men, women and children died that day. Just one child survived. This book tells the story of what happened in Oradour, and imagines what drove both the SS officer who ordered the massacre, and the seven-year-old boy who escaped it. Powerful, moving and almost unbearably tense, this book weaves the truth about what happened to the people in Oradour into a powerful fictional story centred on two characters: the plucky, inspirational seven-year-old Alfred Fournier, refugee and resident of Oradour, and the hot-headed, power-hungry SS commander who shattered his world and changed his life for ever, Major Gustav Dietrich. As their two worlds collide, we gain a fascinating insight into the extremes and contradictions of human behaviour and emotion. With a twist in the tale, this is a story which leaves the reader surprised, inspired and profoundly moved.