A Day With The Old Folks, Verdun 1916, is the story of one day in the lives of a half squad of men engaged in one of the bloodiest battles of World War One. The book is reminiscent of works by Erich Remarque, Ernst Jünge, and Emil Zweig who wrote about their experiences in the Great War; a style that has not been seen since the 1930s. Its inspiration is One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. The Old Folks is a unique group who got their name not because of age but rather for their uncanny ability to survive together for over a year in deadly circumstances. While they weathered artillery bombardments and attacks without wounds or deaths, the four who filled out the rest of the squad came and went as easily as rain as did company commanders and nearly the entire company roster. Other squads in the company avoided them and made up stories about them sucking up all the luck of those assigned to their ranks. The leader, Kluggmann, is a retired professional soldier who was involved in colonial uprisings, the Boer War, and the Boxer Rebellion. He was far from being in prime health or at an age that was suitable for waging war. Yet he was called back to active duty from a mailman’s occupation to fill the noncommissioned officer ranks that were so heavily depleted during the first two years of war. His job was to shape volunteers and conscripted men into soldiers and then lead them at the front providing the backbone of his combat experiences to bolster the determination of his charges. Kowalski was the intellectual that every army unit has. He was denied a higher education by the system which kept lower class people such as him from changing their position in society. Yet, as he put it, his intellect would not rest. Through his readings of Voltaire and Rousseau he found philosophical justification for the war and readily expounds on his logic to any and all who come near. He was also a closet socialist who believes the war will bring change to the social order. Liebermann was a man of the Berlin streets. One step ahead of sheer poverty all his life, he was, nevertheless, a survivor. He can find food and water in abundance in the desolation of the Verdun battlefield. And, finally, there was Lange; the young volunteer from the university desk who is full of both dreams and guilt. He was a patriot who longed for the heroic fight but there was a recurring dream which questioned his ideal. This book puts these men under a microscope accompanying them through confrontation with the enemy. It looks into their dreams and their reasons for being where they are. It also shows the conditions that those men lived under; the smells and the never ending threat of death from exploding shells to the mud that can trap and devour a man. The book’s final chapter brings closure for the Old Folks sixteen years after the end of World War One at the funeral for President Paul von Hindenburg.
