I have not read the book, so I do not know what fiction he cites to, but I don’t find this all that curious. There is a lot of World War I memoir literature, and much of it was in the form of novels, in which the names were changed, but the descriptions and events were eye-witness accounts of the author’s war experience. Frederick Manning and Seigfried Sassoon both wrote classic novels in this mode.

“….glorious offensives and magnanimous generals…”

I don’t know of anyone who writes about World War I in this fashion. It is pretty much always depicted as a vast, cruel, bloody, muddy disaster.

Still, this angle on the war seems worthwhile.