Our Journal: First World War Studies

Among the health emergency of World War I, the one relating to the visual organs injuries is one of the most serious. The use of weapons of new type (grenades, shells, shrapnel) that produce chips that are projected on faces, brings the number of soldiers eye-injured to an already impressive quantity at the end of the first year of conflict. This emergency is completely unexpected and it is particularly serious because this kind of trauma was extremely disabling. This situation cause a reaction by French ophthalmologists who start working to improve the organization of assistance, to administer effective treatments and surgery, and even on some issues beyond the medical field (legislation, assistance for war blinds). This article presents the main issues that French ophthalmologists have had to confront with during the Great War and, through this, to question the impact of the First World War on the development of ophthalmology as a medical specialty.

Key Words: History of medicine, history of ophthalmology, military medicine, social history, war studies

The Australian Graves Detachment, a unit over 11 hundred men, was formed in March 1919 on the Western Front. Its mission was to exhume and re-bury the war dead in a small area of Northern France where the Australian Imperial Force had fought. While war memorialization and grief are significant fields of research in First World War studies, much remains to be written with regard to the processes of burying the millions of dead. Little, for example, has been written about the men who undertook the daunting tasks of exhuming and burying. This article seeks to contribute to this emerging area of inquiry by exploring how discipline was enforced at the Australian Graves Detachment through a range of strategies such as negotiation and care for both the men’s physical and mental wellbeing. It argues that at a time where inflexible military discipline and justice were difficult to enforce, such non-coercive forms of control proved more effective for disciplining the men than formal military sanctions. This article first examines the nature of the work undertaken by the Australian Graves Detachment. Second, it turns to the disciplinary issues which arose from the ranks. Third, the article analyses the strategies put in place by the Commanding Officer of the Detachment to maintain discipline within the unit. In particular, the article highlights how entertainment played a key role in maintaining discipline and morale within the detachment, providing the men with a wide variety of amusing activities that kept them under their officers’ watch and control. Sports, games, theatre, movies, the camera club, afternoon teas and other forms of entertainment insured that men had as little idle time as possible. Entertainment became the cornerstone of the Commanding Officer’s attempts to limit misconduct, and to ensure that the unit would complete its mission.

Key Words: First World War, Graves, Discipline, Morale, Entertainment

This paper explores a little-known ‘book of days’ aimed at boys and their mothers in the wake of the First World War. Written by one Nora Brodie Thornhill, A Little Book for Mothers and Sons was published in London in 1919. In it the author uses anecdotes of army chaplains and others to create a religious coping mechanism for boys, as read by and with their mothers. The article provides context for this kind of text, and for diverse ways in which the relationship between mothers and sons was exploited before, during and after the war.

Key Words: Mothers, Sons, England, Church Army Publications; 1919

Interviewed many decades after the end of the First World War, Mary Morton recalled vividly how her mother’s family had made no secret of their contempt for her father’s conduct during the conflict: he was – they thought – a ‘bounder’. Tellingly, they condemned not his continued civilian status, but the fact that he had volunteered, despite his responsibilities as husband and father. Historians have long recognized the powerful pull of military masculinities during the First World War, as well as the denigration of civilian men and masculinities: this article suggests that the wartime experiences of married men like Mary Morton’s father complicate this picture of hegemonic and subordinate masculinities. They, it was widely agreed in the early years of the conflict, had responsibilities that tied them to the home front; it was unmarried men’s duty to ‘go first’. In May 1916, however, the pressing need for military manpower led to the introduction of conscription for all men, without reference to marital status. This article explores the underlying shift in understandings of manly conduct in wartime, from a belief that married men had responsibilities that kept them from enlisting, to a new emphasis on the equality of duty among all physically fit men of military age, irrespective of domestic responsibilities.

Key Words: First World War, conscription, domesticity, military service, married men, single men, masculinity

Parcels of comforting food sent from the United Kingdom loom large in accounts of how British POWs were sustained during the First World War. But these care packages provoked considerable contestation amongst a variety of stakeholders. While food parcels were part of humanitarianism, the state had considerable oversight as to the amount of food dispatched, the contents of the parcels and who was allowed to send them. They were thus a critical part of the British government’s wartime food strategy. The state’s regulations mitigated the effects of class privilege that extended even into the camps by helping to equalize food distribution amongst interned British subjects. But the British government’s control over parcels starting in late 1916 provoked tensions amongst voluntary associations and led to criticism from the families of imprisoned men and from some POWs themselves who decried what they saw as unnecessary meddling. The standardization and centralization of the parcel system, argued its opponents, undermined the role of families who wished to remain connected to their captive loved ones through nurturing their bodies. In addition, it challenged the masculinity of POWs by rendering them dependent on the state. Sending parcels to British prisoners was thus a much more fraught enterprise and one that involved considerably more government oversight than scholarship on the First World War has previously acknowledged.

Key Words: Prisoners of war, Britain, food, parcels, First World War

On 10 April 1918, Germany assaulted Monrovia in retaliation for Liberia’s entry into World War One. While the Liberian government could not and did not resist the attack, it remained committed to the principles that it professed during the war: political autonomy, for itself and other small nations, and resistance against German and wider imperial aggression. Liberia, therefore, saw itself as an active, if minimal, participant in World War One and refused to exit the conflict when Germany attacked its capital that morning. Unlike much previous scholarship, this article argues that Liberia, as an independent nation, choose to cut off relations and later go to war with Germany, and, at least nominally, supported the Allies throughout the war. More specifically, Liberia entered World War One on the side of the Allies for three main reasons: a frustration with German aggression; a desperate financial situation overwhelming the government; and finally, a desire to establish better security within and on its borders. In making these arguments, this article considers Liberia’s relationship and colonial situation with the United States, its long and complicated history with Germany, its decision to cut off relations and enter World War One, and finally its role in the conflict and its conclusion.

Key Words: Liberia – twentieth century, African Theatre – World War One, Liberia & US relations, Liberia & German relations, Kru – 1915-1916 rebellion, Liberia – financial situation – early-twentieth century