RICK STROUD’s book is a striking history of the Resistance in Belgium and Occupied France during the First World War, focused on the lives of eight very different women across the duration of the war.

He charts the movement from a Resistance made up of people such as Edith Cavell, who found herself on the front line in a position to help towards a series of professional spy networks established to gather information. Stroud does a fine job of telling the story of the work of these women against the backdrop of the progress of the war.

It is a study of personal courage and the determination to do something when the world is aflame around you. We know too little of the violence inflicted on Belgium when the German Army invaded, and it is humbling that it was seeing so many atrocities around them that often made these women take a stand. They had no illusions about their fate if (or when) they were identified. Three of the women were executed by firing squad, and at least two others had their health broken by long imprisonment and hard labour. Another died of medical neglect.

AlamyThe cortège in Dover when Edith Cavell’s remains were returned to England for reburial in 1919

Stroud makes clear how exhausting it was to live a double life, how easy it was to be convicted because of the information you had unwisely kept, and (chillingly) how effective the Germans found using double agents for much of the war.

In the context of a world that is still at war, where we too rarely see unique lives in their wholeness in war zones, Stroud writes movingly and memorably of individuals. There are princesses and aristocrats and the children of innkeepers and mothers.

Gabrielle Petit feels very contemporary in her hatred of authority and her blazing independence. She was 23 when she spoke the book’s title on the way to the firing squad — that she would refuse a blindfold because she was not afraid to look into the rifles. Edith Cavell’s deep Christian faith and her commitment to nursing meant that she responded to the need that she saw around her by taking in wounded soldiers and helping them to cross to safety. Her gentle charisma and quiet courage are clear.

Stroud does a competent job of dealing with a large cast of characters, but the reader occasionally needs to check back to remember who’s who, an inevitable side effect of the diary-style narrative that he has chosen. He has written an impressive book about the First World War which tells the story from a fresh perspective while also speaking into the world today, and for that he should be congratulated. The courage of all eight of the women, and the networks that they were part of, live long in the memory.

The Revd Richard Lamey is Director of Mission and Ministry for the diocese of Norwich.

I Am Not Afraid of Looking into the Rifles: Women of the Resistance in World War One
Rick Stroud
Simon & Schuster £22
(978-1-3985-0706-7)
Church Times Bookshop £19.80