Jerred Metz’s Bellicourt Tunnel: The Crowning Battle of the Great War take its readers out of the trenches, across a machine gun-infested battlefield and towards the heavily-fortified Bellicourt Tunnel. Although a work of fiction rich in detail, the novel reads like first person accounts written by hardened combat veterans. A riveting tale that is tough to put down and a fine tribute to the brave American doughboys of 1918.
Mitchell Yockelson, Borrowed Soldiers: Americans under British Command, 1918
Jerred Metz’s latest novel on the Great War focuses on one of the last great battles of the four-year blood bath that helped bring the terrible toll in deaths to an end. Using original documents and photographs, he developed a fictional group of South Carolinians who train for the battle of their lives. They witness the horrors of battle and the ultimate destruction of the enemy’s greatest defensive line, Bellicourt Tunnel. As he does so, Metz brings in famous people from his first novel of the war. Historical figures Sir Arthur Conon Doyle and Winston Churchill play roles as witnesses to the carnage while the fictitious British corporal, Tommy Atkins, comes back to life to lead them to the front. By using historical figures and fictional characters, Metz tells a story of World War I in a new, captivating way.
Fritz Hamer, Curator of History/Archivist, South Carolina Confederate Relic Room and Military Museum Forward Together: South Carolina in the Great War
