A Sacrifice of Innocents

When John Barrett, a keen amateur historian, stumbles across the official war diary of a British regiment largely composed of volunteers sent to the trenches of France in the Great War, he is inexorably pulled into a story of courage, heroism and appalling suffering. A Sacrifice of Innocents draws us headlong into that world and the gritty realities of trench warfare, in which a man's chances of seeing another dawn were shockingly low. Barrett learns that the 19th (Service Battalion) King's Own Lancashire Rifles were first shipped to France in 1915, serving in a disastrous offensive before being transferred to the quieter' area of the Front in the Somme Valley. There they engage in a little-remembered action that preceded the infamous attack of 1 July 1916, but which was no less disastrous in terms of casualties. Fascinated and horrified by turns, Barrett reads on, oblivious to the fact that his coveted find has a direct connection to the living as well as to the dead.