Rory Farrell is a young man who lives a privileged life in Montreal. In 1915 he is at university, but decides to join the Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry to go off to war. He feels that it is his duty as a Canadian, even though his mother is from Germany. Because of his education, he is selected for officer training.
Training occurs at Valcartier, Quebec with more in England. It really doesn't prepare Farrell for the mud, noise and death of the Ypres Salient. It isn't long after getting into the lines that he begins to lose comrades, and it is during a big German offensive that farrellis wounded. As a result he loses an eye and has a badly damaged hand. He convalesces in England, where on bad nights he dreams and raves in German. As a result he comes to the attention of military intelligence.
Farrell is given a new identity and turned into a spy. He travels via Norway and Sweden to Germany, where he is accepted as the German/American officer whose identity he has taken on. However, there is one man who is suspicious of him. Farrell is impressed by the German army, but he discovers that as a result of the war, Germany is suffering severe deprivations.
In Berlin he meets nurse Gabriele Richter, an avowed socialist. He finds himself attracted to her. Unfortunately their time together is brief before he is transferred to Poland where his assignment is to exploit the resources for the war effort. In Poland, Farrell finds conditions even worse as the country had been stripped first by the Russians and then by the Germans.
Working in German intelligence, Farrell gains valuable information, but how to get it back to England? Author Michael J. Goodspeed has written an excellent thriller around the events of World War One. Written in the first person as a memoir, I found it to be an excellent read.
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