A Dawn with no Birdsong

Tony Matthews

The Western Front, 1917, a place closer to hell than any man has ever been. German forces are overrunning the British and Australian lines and Alex Ray, a young soldier assigned to dig tunnels beneath the enemy’s lines in order to destroy them with explosives, is left with two choices: to remain, fight and almost certainly die along with his two closest friends who have already been killed, or to flee from the front in a desperate attempt to fulfil a promise to save a French family including a young woman, Lisle Raimond, to whom Alex has become closely attached. Alex knows that his agonising decision will almost certainly cost him his life, no matter what he chooses to do.

Inspired by the true events surrounding the executions of British Empire soldiers during the First World War, this is the story of a struggle for survival when it is not the enemy who are your greatest foes, it is the very people for whom you are fighting.

Carefully crafted and with a deep understanding of what life was like in the trenches during that terrible period, Tony Matthews’ powerful and emotionally charged new novel, A Dawn with no Birdsong, takes us back in time with rare clarity, deep compassion and an enviable beauty of expression.