Last Train to Waverley

France, March 1918. Scottish soldiers are caught in the opening of the German Spring Offensive, when a long-static Western Front suddenly becomes mobile and British units are forced into rapid retreat. Over one week, men from different regiments struggle to maintain contact, protect one another and find a route away from the advancing German army.

The novel commemorates Scottish participation in the First World War while concentrating on confusion rather than ceremonial memory. Broken communications, exhausted formations and improvised defence show how large strategic collapse was experienced as a sequence of local decisions by soldiers trying to survive and return home.