During time of war, a soldier might be sent to the front and be in the heart of battle, fight in the war from a ship or naval base or even live relatively quietly, performing fairly routine tasks away from the main areas of conflict. Soldiers were sometimes captured and might be held for lengthy periods as prisoners of war. Case studies included in this theme will explore all of these aspects of the soldier’s life. They have been grouped as follows:
Life at Sea,
Life at the Front,
Life Away from the Front, and
Life in Prison . As might be expected, "Life at the Front" is the sub theme containing most material and it also provides an audio component allowing you to listen to the reading of letters from the trenches during the First World War.
Leighton, Roland, Poem, April 1915
Violets from Plug Street Wood
Sweet, I send you oversea.
(It is strange that they should be blue,
Blue when his soaked blood was red,
For they grew around his head:
It is strange they should be blue.)
Canadian YMCA, Photograph, 1917
The Canadian YMCA provided a wide variety of services – educational, social, spiritual, practical and even psychological – for Canadian troops serving overseas during the First World War. In a revealing and affectionate series of letters, William Fingland, an officer serving with the “Y”, provided vivid insights into his daily life to his sweetheart, waiting at home.
Coombs, Geo A.A., Postcard photograph, [1916?]
The invitation to “join the Navy and see the world” certainly fulfilled its promise for young Englishman Charles Jones. Only sixteen when he joined the service, Jones was a Gunner’s Mate on the battleship Marlborough during one of the most dramatic and destructive sea battles of the First World War.
This album shows a lighter side of war; it meticulously documents the highly professional theatrical entertainments mounted by British soldiers in south-west Germany during the final months of the First World War.
One of McMaster’s few holdings of German archival material, the letters of Otto and Ada Hartmann extend over a period of less than a year, between the spring and fall of 1915. Despite the relatively small size of the collection, amounting to some two dozen letters, it nevertheless provides valuable insight into military operations and attitudes in the German rearguard and into the daily life of a German soldier’s wife during this important first full year of international warfare.
German Army, Military document, 9 September 1942
“When you get back to England, say hello to the Queen for me. I used to work for her father.” This was William Frank Kenwood’s standard salutation in his later years whenever he would encounter anyone from the British Isles. It was one of the few references he would make about his time as an R.A.F. airman or to the two and half years he spent as a German prisoner of war.
Photograph, [ca. 1943-1944]
The letters of the McDaniel brothers, RCAF ground crewmen stationed in northern England during the Second World War, are filled with the war-time experiences, momentous and mundane, of two young men, offering a glimpse into the often overlooked lives of ground unit personnel.
The letters of British pilot John Lisle, who spent two years as a German prisoner of war (1943-45), as well as revealing the tedium and sense of isolation of the prisoner’s life, provide insights into the ways the prisoners tried to live as “normally” as they could.
Photograph, December 1914
The Christmas Truce of December 1914 has become the stuff of legend. In a savage war which dragged on for four long years and in which perhaps eight million people died, it seems almost inconceivable that groups of soldiers in the trenches, the declared enemies of one another, could have exchanged songs and cigarettes, even for a brief interlude. Gerald Blake was there.
Eric Grove was only nineteen years old when he joined the Royal Air Force and at the age of twenty-one he was flying Lancaster bombers across Germany. One year later, at just twenty-two, he became a prisoner of war.
Post new comment