Under heaven

Prologue

*A NOTE TO THE READER*

THIS BOOK IS A REALISTIC PORTRAYAL OF WAR AND WARTIME EXPERIENCE AND IS NOT INTENDED FOR YOUNGER READERS.

IT CONTAINS GRAPHIC DEPICTIONS OF VIOLENCE, DEATH, COARSE LANGUAGE AND EXPLICIT SEXUAL EXPLOITS.

The summer of 1914 bore witness to great and terrible events that would rapidly set the stage for global conflict.

The "war to end all wars" would be the first fully mechanized conflict in human history, claiming the lives of tens of millions.

The modern nature of the conflict, in combination with obsolete nineteenth century methods of military management, would result in killing on an industrial scale.

By late fall of that same year, the mobile nature of war would grind to a quick and bloody halt. After the numerous engagements of the Marne and frontiers, German forces began pulling back to highly defensible positions in eastern France and Belgium, with the intention to "hold and fortify."

With the German battle plan in ruins, both sides raced north. The allies numerous attempts to turn the German's north flank, and subsequent fortification tactics and counter attacks by the German army, would result in what became know as "The Race to The Sea."

After the German retreat from the Marne region, the period of military mobility would only last a few more weeks. By late November, after a last desperate attempt by the allies to break the front at Ypres, both sides were well entrenched in a line stretching from the Swiss border to the English Channel.

It was at this time the European empires would call upon the young manpower of their colonies to fill depleted ranks.

Within a few short weeks, Men women and children around the globe would take up arms, enter production lines and work in mines.

It would become a war where mankind would test it's limits of cruelty as never seen before.

Genocide of entire civilian populations, gas attacks and white phosphorus would become comon place. killing would be as wholesale and as calculated as reaping a field of grain. So much so, that by 1917, the British army would come to consider the loss of 30,000 troops a month on the western front, "normal wastage".

Through all of this, life for the individual continued. Irreversibly altered by the war, all who became embroiled within it's brutality would forever be marked as "The lost generation".

This book is an attempt to bring to life the story of their time, their love, their loss and their struggle.