The story is about a young soldier who fights against his own shortcomings as a soldier and as a man. It shows the dilemma of a German army troop. A German soldier overcomes fear at an exercise to climb a siege ladder, accidentally knocks his sergeant off the wall, goes into hiding with his girlfriend in a farmhouse hoping to escape to France but soldiers come to arrest him.
A war time based story, it is semi autobiographical and pertains to a lot of incidents in Lawrence’s own life at that point in time. In 1912 Lawrence had eloped with Frieda, the wife of his German tutor at University College, Nottingham. He travelled to her home town of Metz on the German/French border. This becomes the setting for the first two stories in the collection - The Prussian Officer and other stories.
The Prussian Officer and other stories were published in 1914. The collection has 12 stories in all.
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