It is 1917 and 90-feet beneath the German trenches on the Messines Ridge in Flanders, two young British Sappers are guarding 60,000 pounds of explosives designed to blow the enemy positions sky high. But the enemy is already tunnelling towards them. Raymond Hitchcock's immaculately-researched World War I saga, first published in 1986, is a graphic description of trench warfare and the perilous work of the Tunnellers who fought their war beneath the trenches. The brutality of tunnel life, the tensions between officers and the men, the comradeship and the heroism of the battlefield are delicately contrasted with flashbacks to pre-war Somerset village life, making this a tense, exciting and surprisingly tender thriller.