Two World War I classics: The story of a British soldier enduring the battle in France and a novella starring a man who takes drastic steps to escape the Great War. In The Somme and its companion The Coward, first published in 1927, the heroics of war and noble self-sacrifice are completely absent; replaced by the gritty realism of life in WWI for the ordinary soldier, and the unflinching portrayal of the horrors of war. Written under the guidance of the master storyteller H. G. Wells, they are classics of the genre. The Somme revolves around a futile attack in 1916 during the Somme campaign. Everitt, the central protagonist, is wounded and moved back through a series of dressing stations to the General Hospital at Rouen. Both in and out of the line he behaves selfishly and unheroically, but in a manner with which it is hard for the reader not to identify. Based on A. D. Gristwood's own wartime experiences, critics have said that few other accounts of the war give such an accurate picture of trench life. The Coward concerns a man who shoots himself in the hand to escape the war, during the March 1918 retreat - an offense punishable by death. He gets away with it, but is haunted by fear of discovery and self-loathing.