I Am Not Afraid of Looking into the Rifles

This is not a history of the First World War. It is the story of the women of the resistance in Belgium and Occupied northern France during that conflict.

Stroud uses six main characters as a lens to describe the work of an extraordinarily brave group of women. In 1914, before the Germans invaded, they were ordinary people – some were poor, some were rich, some were low born and others from the top echelons of society – they were drawn together by war and they show what the individual can do when faced with apparently overwhelming odds.

Their work was not glamorous, but it was essential and has often been overlooked; it was also dangerous and the penalties death or life imprisonment. Three of the women he writes about faced the firing squad, including Louise Derache (the first woman to die in front of a firing squad in WWI), British nurse Edith Cavell, and Gabrielle Petit, the Beligian national hero whose response to her imminent execution gives this book its I am not afraid of staring into the Rifles.

This is a devastating story, beautifully told; it will introduce you to an entirely new version of the war.