One winter's morning, Barroux was walking down a street in Paris when he made an incredible discovery: the diary of a soldier in the First World War.
Barroux rescued the diary from a rubbish heap and illustrated the soldier’s words. We have no idea who the soldier is or what became of him. We just have his words; and in his own words and Barroux's extraordinary pictures, this is his story.
In this striking graphic novel adaptation of a 100-year-old diary, the events of the first two months of WWI are told through the eyes of the unknown soldier. This is living history in the form of one man's story silhouetted against the historical events of 1914 that formed and transformed the world we live in today.
In the words of Michael Morpurgo, who has written a special introduction to the book, this is ‘a witness statement, the untrammelled, unedited voice of someone who was there.’
What do we know about our soldier?
The diary begins in August 1914 with the outbreak of WWI and the last entry is 13th September, 1914. We don't know what happened to our solder. The diary was discovered with a medal and the song lyrics at the back of the diary continue until 1917. The soldier's name has long faded from the cover of the diary and there is no name inside the diary.
We do know that our soldier was an infantryman. We know he wasn't a new soldier. We know he had a wife. We know he narrowly escaped death on 28th August, 1914. We know there are other clues in the diary such as his locations and his descriptions of events. |