I felt most uncomfortable at times, setting a story within the trenches of the First World War. In these days of peace (or perhaps, of fighting our wars at arm’s length in somebody else’s theatre) it’s hard to imagine the scale of world war.

Not just the number of people put into uniform, but the mindset. Nowadays, the news reports on each death, where in the major wars of the past that would have been simply impossible. On the opening day of the Battle of the Somme, some 800 men of the Newfoundland Regiment Battalion went into action. Only 110 survived unscathed. The Divisional Commander recorded of their efforts thus: “It was a magnificent display of trained and disciplined valour, and its assault failed of success because dead men can advance no further.”

“He’s a cheery old card,” grunted Harry to Jack
As they slogged up to Arras with rifle and pack.

But he did for them both by his plan of attack.

(Siegfried Sassoon, ‘The General’)

There are estimated to have been seven and a half million military casualties among the allies, on the Western Front – and five and a half million for the central powers. That’s through four and a quarter years of fighting, almost all of it in a deadlock where only the smallest gains were possible. 

With my 21st century detachment from the nationalistic urges that caused the men of the Empire to return to dysfunctional Europe and join in their war, it’s hard to comprehend their bravery and sacrifice while at the same time believing that those same lives were frequently thrown away by leaders who barely understood the circumstances into which they sent them.

Things become still more morally ambiguous when you set a piece of fiction against that background. In the afterword to ‘Outbreak 1917’ I considered saying something about the true scale of the war at that time… but an adventure story isn’t the right place to do that. Professional historians can do that job far better.

The line between entertainment and education can be a blurry one. In 2019 we will mark 75 years since ‘D-Day’, with acts of remembrance but also with re-enactments. How would a veteran feel about that? In the case of the First World War, there are none left to ask: that generation has passed completely into history, some taken during the war and others much later, but now all gone. Does that make it OK to take their war and adulterate it with zombie mythos? No. But their war is still their war. I worked hard to suspend disbelief in ‘Outbreak’, presenting Lawrence’s diary/memoir as an epistolary novel… but the spring of 1917 where the Mud Madness erupted can only be seen as an alternate timeline. I would hate to think that I have treated the combatants of the First World War in a disrespectful manner.