6/10, it was ok. ( )

This was a simple story about 3 young men in the last hours of WWI. The three are Axel, a young German soldier, Will, in the British infantry and equally young and Eddie, a US pilot and a veteran of nine months flying. These three characters are all very likeable with each not just trying to survive but to do the right thing and not let anyone down. The story has each of them drawing geographically closer to each other as they continue to follow orders until peace is declared. Soldiers continue to fight and die right up to the eleventh hour.
The writing is easy to read and, as always Paul Dowswell, has created an authentic background for his characters to inhabit. The brutality and pointlessness of the trench warfare comes through very clearly. At the end the three young men realise that it really doesn’t matter where you are born but what you choose to do, and how you do it, matters if you survive.
This is would be a good book for younger readers to better understand something about WWI ( )

Some 3,000 soldiers on both sides were killed on the very last day of the First World War, in the eleven hours before the Armistice came into effect at 11am on 11 November 1918. This novel, aimed at younger readers, though worth reading by anyone, tells the stories of some of those who died, and some of those who survived, during those last few hours, based around the doings of three young men, one British, one German and one American. There are poignant stories of those who die in moments of carelessness or through casual mischance, often at the hands, or rather the bullets, of a sniper hidden in the forest. There is great anger expressed over the fact that the Armistice does not come into effect for six hours after it is signed and yet some people on all sides fight right up until the end, and many soldiers did not know the Armistice had been signed for much of that time. These stories are in a way more poignant and heart-rending than many others - to die so near to the end is even more than usually tragic and wasteful of young lives; some of the minor characters who do so have actually managed to survive for four years at the Front. A gripping and fairly short read. ( )