Product Description

A wartime romance, survival saga and murder mystery set in rural France during the First World War.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #85732 in Books
• Published on: 2002-07-01
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 320 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
In A Foreign Field Ben MacIntyre has found another story from history's margins In two previous books, Forgotten Fatherland and The Napoleon of Crime, he focused on characters from the footnotes of history, creating compelling narratives from the stories of Nietzsche's sister and of a Victorian master criminal, brought it centre stage and constructed a very powerful drama of love, war and death around it. Robert Digby was a well-educated, middle-class private in the British Expeditionary Force at the beginning of World War I. In the very first month of the war, as the British, French and German armies surged back and forth across tracts of northern France, he became isolated behind enemy lines. When the fluid front lines of the war's first phase rapidly hardened into the murderous stalemate of the trenches, Digby and other British soldiers were permanently trapped in German-occupied territory. Seven, including Digby, took refuge in the small village of Villeret and were given shelter and assistance by the villagers. Under the noses of the German occupiers, they lived in Villeret for 18 months, masquerading as villagers. Relationships between the French peasants and the British soldiers grew strong. Digby fell in love with Claire Dessenne, the 19-year-old daughter of one of his protectors. In November 1915 Claire gave birth to Digby's daughter. Six months later someone in the village betrayed the men to the Germans. Digby and three others were captured, tried as spies and executed by firing squad. Digby's daughter, now in her 80s, still lives in northern France. Using her memories and those of other villagers, archive material and a handful of surviving letters by Digby (including one written to Claire only hours before his execution), Macintyre has produced a real-life story of the First World War as poignant and moving as Sebastian Faulks's novel Birdsong. --Nick Rennison

Review
Ben Macintyre is a journalist of penetrating insight and originality, with two other excellent works of non-fiction to his name: Forgotten Fatherland and The Napoleon of Crime. In 1999, when working in Paris as correspondent for The Times, he was contacted by the schoolmaster of a small village called Le Catelet in Northern France. The local people were holding a little ceremony, the schoolmaster explained, the unveiling of a plaque to honour four British soldiers executed by a German firing squad in 1916. It was to be a modest affair, he went on, but it would mean a lot to the villagers if a representative of the newspaper could attend. Macintyre fumbled for polite excuses. At that stage, although inevitably aware of its still obvious scar on French soil, Macintyre knew the Great War only dimly: from the perennial paper poppies of Armistice Day, from its songs and memorials. To him the Unknown Soldier was exactly that: unknown. He saw no reason to single out the commemoration of a mere four from the 720,000 British troops slain. But the schoolmaster was insistent. 'You will find it interesting,' he said. Reluctantly, Macintyre agreed to go. What follows, the account of what Macintyre then uncovered, is not simply interesting but a story as poignant as any to issue from those tortured four years of European history. Including flight, rescue, love, loyalty and then ultimately a devastating betrayal, Macintyre could be writing the best sort of fiction. Yet this is not a novel but the truth. It happened, its legacy lives on and with that legacy the sense that, somehow, that soldier is no longer unknown. If you are going to read one book about the First World War, make it this one. (Kirkus UK)

STUART WAVELL, Sunday Times
‘ Stirring, ambitious and profound, storytelling at its very best... this ranks as one of the books of the year’