An eBook short. A dispatch from the underground world of Birdsong, a story of love and World War I. In a stagnant war of trenches and barbed wire, there is one final desperate underground. Jack Firebrace is part of an elite group of British tunnellers, miners by profession, without the military training of infantry but facing unfathomable dangers just the same, forty-five feet underground with several hundred thousand tons of France above their heads. Birdsong, published to international critical and popular acclaim, has become the canonical novel of romance and devastating violence in World War I. In this selection, we are introduced to Jack Firebrace, one of the novel’s central characters, and are given an unforgettable portrait of the lives of soldiers in an unimaginable position.