Description

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Life in the trenches for German soldiers during World War I was every bit as hellish as it was for Allied troops. Arthur Boer survived almost four years of continual fighting on both the Eastern and Western fronts as a sapper (combat engineer) who found himself in the thick of major battles. He laid barbed wire in no-man's-land under machine gun fire, bet money on aerial combat above the trenches between Baron von Richthofen and the English, faced starvation and crushing boredom. His war diary describes all in gritty detail, including the horror of gas warfare, doomed vainglorious charges and his return home to a ruined Germany.

About the Author

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The late Artur H. Boer was a professional engineer who lived and worked in Sweden after his emigration there in 1921. Bertil van Boer is a musician, conductor, composer and professor of musicology-theory at Western Washington University. The author of several books on 18th century music, he lives in Bellingham, Washington. Margaret L. Fast is the research and instruction services librarian at Western Washington University, serving especially the departments of history and modern & classical languages. She also lives in Bellingham.