In his autobiographically influenced field medical novel "The Bandage Boxes," Frey paints an unvarnished picture of World War I. The experiences are reflected and condensed in the story of the writer Funk, who is assigned as a medic to the Western Front and soberly records the truth: the everyday life of the ordinary soldier, harassment, cynicism and malice, grotesquely incompetent superiors, and the omnipresence of death. The National Socialists could not tolerate the highly regarded novel; during the book burnings of 1933, the Bandage Boxes also ended up in the flames of the pyres.