Witness to War: Hayden and the Great War: BOOK SIX - (1916–1918) (Witness to War – The Hayden Carter Chronicles 6)
About
The war to end all wars was only the beginning.
Europe is burning. Trenches stretch for miles across the scarred fields of France, where machine guns mow down entire generations and poison gas drifts like a silent predator. Tanks rumble forward, biplanes duel in the skies, and the ground itself shakes under the thunder of artillery. It is 1916, and the Great War has turned the modern world into a graveyard.
Sixteen-year-old Hayden Carter has already been pulled through the Revolution, the frontier wars, the Civil War, and America’s rise to empire. Now, the Pull hurls him into the deadliest conflict yet. Mistaken for a young soldier, Hayden becomes a trench runner and medic’s helper, carrying messages through firestorms and binding the wounds of dying comrades. Along the way he encounters:
- General John J. “Black Jack” Pershing, leading America’s new army into the blood-choked fields of France.
- Alvin York, the Tennessee farm boy whose reluctant courage would astonish the world.
- James O’Connell, a sharp-witted Irish-American doughboy who teaches Hayden how humor can defy despair.
- Marie Dubois, a French girl scarred by war, whose quiet resilience shows Hayden the civilian cost of conquest.
- Rosa Martinez, a Red Cross nurse who proves that mercy can be as powerful as any weapon.
From the doomed raid against Pancho Villa on the Mexican border to the hell of Verdun, the nightmare of the Somme, the frozen forests of the Battle of the Bulge, and the liberation of shattered villages, Hayden witnesses the brutality of World War I in all its modern horror. And when the Armistice finally comes on November 11, 1918, he sees the celebrations in Paris shadowed by bitterness and grief — a fragile peace that cannot hold.
For readers of historical fiction, World War I novels, and epic war sagas, Witness to War: Hayden and the Great War (1916–1918) delivers an unforgettable journey. Through Hayden’s eyes, you’ll stand in the trenches, hear the whistle of shells, run through No Man’s Land with a message clutched to your chest, and witness both the cruelty and courage of humanity.
This is not just a story about battles — it is about endurance, sacrifice, and the fragile hope that survives even in the darkest war. If you’ve followed Hayden from Lexington to Gettysburg, to Cuba, to the Philippines, and beyond, you know the burden he carries. Now he steps into the storm that reshaped the world.
Will the boy who carries history’s fire find light in a world drowning in darkness? Or will the Great War teach him that some shadows are too vast to escape?
Step into the mud and the fire. Witness the truth. And carry it forward.