True Stories of the Great War, Volume 4 (of 6): Tales of Adventure--Heroic Deeds--Exploits Told by the Soldiers, Officers, Nurses, Diplomats, Eye Witnesses

In Short

True Stories of the Great War, Volume 4 is a 1917 anthology collecting one hundred thirty-four first-person accounts of World War I from twenty-eight different storytellers. Gathering the direct testimony of soldiers, Red Cross nurses, aviators, spies, submarine commanders, and fleeing civilians, the book offers a immediate, unvarnished panorama of global conflict. It endures because it strips away political grandstanding to preserve the precise, lived realities of human beings navigating total war—from the choking mud of the Somme to the terrifying depths of the ocean.

The Story

The volume opens in the shadow of invasion, detailing the immediate disruption of civilian life as enemy forces sweep across Poland and France. Secret agents slip across borders in civilian clothing, observing troop movements and monitoring the international trade of war supplies. In the United States, an observer travels alongside covert operatives on trains from Albany to New York, noting how easily wartime intelligence blends into ordinary transit.

The narrative quickly shifts to the front lines, plunging deep beneath the surface of the Atlantic aboard the German submarine U-202. Inside the iron vessel, crew members hold their breath as depth charges detonate above them, measuring their survival by the rising numbers on a pressure gauge. Above ground, American newspaper correspondents and Red Cross drivers navigate a scarred landscape. Motor ambulances race through black, disease-ridden mud to reach field hospitals, splashing past lines of displaced refugees who have been driven from destroyed hamlets like Quesnoy-sur-Somme.

As the conflict deepens, the book captures the quiet, tragic rituals of non-combatants. In rain-slicked city streets, French soldiers present arms to a funeral procession for a deceased infant born to an impoverished mother. In ruined frontline towns like Ypres and Pervyse, civilian volunteers and nurses attempt to maintain basic human routines, serving meals and playing piano pieces by Debussy while artillery fire rattles the walls.

In the trenches, the human element briefly breaks through the violence. French-Canadian soldiers realize they are facing German units hailing from Ontario, leading to temporary, unofficial truces where men stand atop parapets to converse rather than shoot. Yet the brutal nature of modern warfare constantly reasserts itself through underground mining, where soldiers listen in dread for subterranean digging, fearing they will be blown to pieces at any moment.

Attempts to escape the madness bring their own perils. Captives fleeing prison camps tread barefoot along dark roads, only to be caught miles from safety and forced to endure solitary confinement and public humiliation. On the high seas, neutral civilians and captured crews are held aboard commerce raiders, watching helpless targets get overhauled in the dark. In Belgium, a woman disguised as a peasant and later a soldier risks everything to see her husband one last time before he marches to his death at Arras. Desperate riverboat crews snap high-voltage cables to break through blockades into neutral waters, while entire regiments sink into bottomless Eastern European marshes. The arc closes aboard the sinking battlecruiser Blücher, where shellfire turns steel decks into chaos, leaving surviving soldiers in bomb craters to question their leaders and ask why they are fighting at all.

How It Unfolds

The hidden war begins Secret agents and traveling observers move discreetly across neutral and belligerent territories, gathering intelligence on livestock shipments, military logistics, and covert operations while sharing quiet dinners on passenger trains heading toward Atlantic ports.

Submerging into the abyss A submarine commander dives thirty meters below the surface to escape enemy fire, describing the agonizing silence inside the conning tower as the crew listens to underwater explosions crackling above them.

Through the ruined hamlets Ambulance drivers barrel through thick, contaminated mud to haul dying soldiers to field hospitals, leaving behind displaced refugees who step off cattle cars into the wreckage of their shelled villages.

Processions through the rain A bereaved mother walks behind a simple wooden coffin through desolate, factory-lined streets, where digging soldiers and marching infantrymen pause to present arms to her dead child.

Unlikely truces in the mud Opposing forces discover shared origins across No Man's Land, forging unwritten treaties of peace until commanding officers transfer the regiments to prevent them from humanizing the enemy.

The terror of the mines Infantrymen lie awake in wet trenches listening to the faint scrape of enemy picks beneath the earth, knowing subterranean explosives could detonate under their feet at any second.

Flight across borders Escaped prisoners of war trek barefoot through cold woods by night, only to be captured short of the frontier, while brave spouses don military uniforms to slip past sentries for a final goodbye.

Destruction on the water Naval broadsides reduce massive warships to rocking iron graves, leaving wounded survivors huddled in cratered earth alongside dead enemies, wondering why their leaders dragged them into slaughter.

The People

• The Submarine Commander (Baron Spiegel von und zu Peckelsheim): A German naval officer who demands absolute obedience from his crew while navigating the terrifying depths of the ocean in the U-202, relying on diving rudders and steel walls to survive enemy depth charges.
• The Secret Observer (Bernhart Paul Holst): A sharp-eyed traveler who moves among spies and covert agents from Iowa to New York, keeping his own motives hidden while recording the logistics of the global horse trade.
• Alice: A grieving mother who walks alone behind the hearse carrying her infant through rain-swept, industrial streets, keeping close to the coffin while soldiers draw up to salute her loss.
• The Ambulance Driver: A dedicated volunteer who races motor vehicles across ruined roads and fever-tainted mud, forced to prioritize critical casualties over the desperate civilian refugees fleeing destroyed hamlets.
• The French-Canadian Soldier: A frontline infantryman who discovers a common bond with German troops facing his trench, keeping an unwritten pact of peace until forced to move by higher command.
• The Captured Escaper: A stubborn prisoner who slips off his boots to flit like a shadow toward the Dutch border, enduring solitary confinement and public ridicule after being caught just miles from freedom.

In Its Own Voice

"Dear, true, splendid little boat, how one learns to love you during such trying moments and would like to pet you like a living human being for your understanding and obedience!"

A submarine commander reflects on the intense emotional bond between a crew and their iron vessel as they hide beneath thirty meters of ocean to escape roaring explosions above.

"The bigger brother walked like a true apache, slouching and slinking along, shoulders hunched up, head sunk down, face hidden between his muffler and the peak of his cap."

A witness describes the quiet, tragic procession of an impoverished family following a infant's rough wooden coffin through the industrial outskirts of a city in the rain.

"'Wilhelm wanted it and they did not want it. And I obeyed not them, but Wilhelm! And here I am, on French, on foreign soil, beside you, in this hole...'"

A dying German soldier trapped inside a crater speaks across the divide to his enemy, bitterly questioning the monarchical orders that drove him to perish in a foreign land.

What It's Really About

Beneath the immediate drama of battlefield exploits, the collection explores the total erasure of individual identity by the mechanisms of modern warfare. It juxtaposes the immense, impersonal scale of global conflict—evidenced by mass mud-slurried evacuations, naval broadsides, and industrial horse-buying operations—against the frail, persistent need for human connection. The accounts demonstrate how war forces people of every background into impossible moral and physical positions, whether they are nurses playing Debussy amidst artillery shelling or opposing infantrymen inventing brief, unauthorized truces. Ultimately, the book examines the tragic gap between the ideological motives of high commanders and the immediate, desperate struggle of ordinary individuals simply trying to survive another hour.

Why Read It Today

This volume appeals to readers who prefer raw, unfiltered historical evidence over polished secondary histories. It offers a gritty, unromanticized window into the early twentieth century, stripping away romantic notions of battle to show the wet, unvarnished realities of modern combat. Reading it feels like sitting in a crowded room of exhausted survivors, each eager to hand over a single fragment of what they saw: the smell of coal soot in refugee yards, the terrifying stillness of a submerged U-boat, or the silent respect of muddy soldiers saluting a passing hearse.

The book does present specific reading challenges. Because it was compiled in 1917 while the war was still actively raging, the writing occasionally reflects period nationalisms, sharp regional biases, and dated cultural attitudes. The prose varies dramatically from section to section, shifting from professional journalistic reporting to emotional personal diary entries and tense military memoirs. Yet these roughnesses are precisely what make the volume valuable. It stands as a vivid, immediate chronicle of human endurance, preserving the genuine voices of men and women caught in the central crisis of their age.