Ranging from the First World War to the Gulf War, this collection of stories investigates the nature of military experience: from call-ups, the field of battle and comradeship, to leave, hospitalisation and trauma in later life. Truly international in scope, it includes stories by Erich Maria Remarque and Pat Barker, Isaac Babel and Ernest Hemingway, Heinrich Boll and Norman Mailer, JG Ballard and Tim O`Brian, Julian Barnes and Louis de Bernieres. Together they form a uniquely powerful evocation of the horrors of war.