An eye-witness account of the fall of Antwerp to the Germans in the opening months of World War I, Mack’s story has passages of extraordinary vividness and immediacy. Flawed by the most treacly sentiment in some places and the most ferocious anti-German invective in others, her account endures as an uncommonly forthright, passionate testimony to those tragic events and the ordinary people who were the true heroes of them. As a forty-something, coquettish war correspondent wrapped in sable furs and speaking French in her native Australian accent, she seems to have inspired amusement in some observers, but her courage in the face of wartime brutality bordered on suicidal effrontery, as she ...