is not about the millions who died in the First World War; it is about the countless thousands of men who lived as long-term casualtiesnot of shrapnel and gas, but of the bleak trauma of the slaughter they escaped. In this powerful new book, Michle Barrett uncovers the lives of five ordinary soldiers who endured the war to end all wars, and how they dealt with its horrors, both at the front and after the wars end. Through their stories, Barrett sheds new light on the nature of the psychological damage of war, which for the first time became both widely acknowledged and profoundly controversial through the term shell shock. Drawing on a wealth of previously unpublished material, is a moving and original account of the psychological havoc caused by war.