A Foreign Field

Ben MacIntyre turns once again to a little-known episode from the past, following his earlier narrative histories of Nietzsche's sister and a Victorian master criminal. This time the subject is Robert Digby, an educated middle-class private serving with the British Expeditionary Force in the opening weeks of the First World War.

In August 1914, as the armies swept across northern France, Digby was cut off behind German lines. As the fighting settled into the static trench warfare that would define the conflict, he and several other British soldiers found themselves stranded in occupied territory with no route home. Seven of them, Digby among them, sought refuge in the village of Villeret, where local residents sheltered them and helped them survive. For eighteen months they hid in plain sight, passing as villagers while German forces were stationed nearby.

During that time Digby formed a close bond with Claire Dessenne, the nineteen-year-old daughter of one of the families protecting him, and their daughter was born in November 1915. Six months later an informer in the village gave the men away. Digby and three of his companions were arrested, tried as spies and shot by firing squad.

MacIntyre draws on the recollections of villagers, including Digby's daughter, who is now in her eighties and still lives in northern France, together with official archives and a small number of surviving letters, one of them written to Claire hours before his death. The result is a human account of the war's early years, told from behind the lines.