FOR OVER A MONTH, the young soldier spent sixteen hours a day toiling alongside his fellow prisoners of war in the German trenches. He dug and hauled spoil, loaded artillery shells into howitzer cannons, and scurried onto no-man’s-land during ceasefires to retrieve injured and dead German soldiers. He regretted every shovelful of earth he removed that helped fortify the enemy’s position, he begged God for forgiveness with every shell he loaded into a howitzer aimed at the Allied trenches, and he said silent prayers for the fallen comrades he left behind every time he carried the body of a fallen enemy off the battlefield. But the young soldier never questioned or refused an order. To do so would have earned him a bullet to the head and an unmarked grave.
At night, when he lay awake, too hungry and afraid to sleep, he stared across no-man’s-land. When the guns fell silent, he could hear the voices of Allied soldiers drifting over the battlefield. He dreamed of running across the stretch of desolate land to join them. It would only take him a few minutes to reach the other side if a German or British sniper didn’t stop him first. With a heavy sigh, he pushed the fantasy of escaping from his mind and curled up next to the French boy in their dugout. Trying to escape would be too great a risk. If he hoped to ever get home to his family again, he had to stay alive, and, burrowed deep into the higher ground bordering no-man’s-land, there was no place safer on the Western Front than the German trenches.