Ypres - Richard Toulouse

A generation fed to the machine.

Thomas Elsdon trades the quiet predictability of a shipping clerk's life for the chaos of the Western Front. But as the patriotic fervour of the wars beginning fades into the mud of the Salient, he realizes the war is not a crusade, but a vast, unfeeling factory of death.

From the terror of the first gas attacks, to the white chalk of Picardy, and back to the subterranean dread of the tunnel wars, Thomas is thrust into a conflict that reduces men to mere components. Alongside a dwindling group of survivors; including the cynical carpenter Jack and the fragile schoolteacher Johnson , he must navigate a world where the only certainty is the relentless turning of the gears.

In the face of annihilation, Thomas uses his sketchbook to keep his sanity, capturing the human cost of a war that has forgotten the value of a life.