Changes

|title=Line of Fire : Diary of an Unknown Soldier (August, September 1914)

|author=Barroux

|publisher=Phoenix Yard Books

|date=February 2014

|summary=A very low-key text from close to the French front line at the outset of World War One, vividly and intelligently illustrated for this all-ages graphic novel.

}}

A scientist can tell a bit about an animal's nature just by observing the beginnings of its life ('it's in water, ergo it's probably a fish'). They don't need to study every ant in the colony to see how ants collaborate and work together, for the detail is pretty much shared from one ant to the next. So it is with soldiers, at least as far as this book is concerned. You can pick one soldier from all the battalions and learn something of soldierly life. You can see the nature of the war from what happens at the outset. And here all we get is the outset, for this graphic novel is based on a manuscript the artist found purely by chance, of a solitary soldier's diary that covers only a couple of weeks in 1914, and stops obliquely.