The disastrous effects of the First World War had their repercussions around the globe, with millions of soldiers dying on the war front. But the ones who bore the brunt of it all, the ones who suffered the anguish of losing loved ones, were the women back home. To the world leaders, they might be soldiers, just a number in the casualties of war, but to the women at home, they were husbands, brothers, fathers, sons and lovers, people with whom they had shared hopes and dreams, love and emotions. They may not have suffered physical wounds, but their pain was far deeper. The long hours of waiting for news, the anxiety of not knowing whether they were dead or alive, the lonely nights spent in shedding tears-all were taking a toll upon them. Letters were exchanged, some received and some not, and yet they strived on, hoping for an end, hoping for a new beginning, hoping for a freedom that never came.
Fear, grief and sorrow: these were the overriding emotions of war. For men, women and children confined to the home front between 1914 and 1918, exhilarating surges of patriotic energies and the evaporation of many restraints were fleeting thrills when set against the loss of loved ones. Children woke to find that their fathers had left for distant battlefields while they slept. Three hundred thousand never saw their fathers again; 160,000 wives received the dreaded telegram informing that their husbands had been killed. Countless others discovered the meaning of suffering.
Hundreds of men, young and old, left for the war, with the dream of achieving glory for their nation. They knew little of what they were leaving behind, inspired only by the call of the war, a chance for them to make a mark on history. What remains obscure in the pages of history is what happened to the women, how they coped with the losses of their family, how they waited for years for the men to come back. Though their intentions were honourable, what the men did not realise was the aching gap that they had left in their wake. It was unimaginable what they must have felt like, with mothers receiving telegrams of the deaths of their sons, daughters visiting unmarked graves far from home, whole families being torn apart.
Most of the evidence of the emotional turmoil that the women went through was gleaned through their writings, letters, diary entries, memoirs, etc. Since letters were the only means of communication, women wrote frequently, though most did not make it to the hands of the intended receiver. Usually, these letters contained mundane details about life at home, the daily comings and goings, but many captured the poignancy of their plight. The soldiers wrote back as often as they could, unable to give out many details due to wartime restrictions, but their letters too often contained expressions of their longing to return home to their families.
When Phyllis Kelly first heard that her lover Eric Appleby had been seriously wounded, she immediately put pen to paper. “My own darling Englishman”, she wrote from Dublin on October 28, 1915, “I wonder why I’m writing this, which you may never see-oh God, perhaps even now you have gone far away from your lady-I wonder when another telegram will come; this knowing nothing is terrible, I don’t know what to do. I simply have sat and shivered with such an awful clutching fear at my heart...Oh my love, my love, what shall I do but I must be brave and believe all will be well-dear one, surely God won’t take you from me now. It will be the end of everything that matters....you are all the world and life to me.” The letter was never posted: Eric was already dead.
The story of Amy Beechey’s loss of her five sons to the First World War is also poignant. Married to Reverend William Beechey, together they raised their 13 children, eight sons and five daughters, of which now only one son and the daughters remain. Mothers all over Britain were receiving telegrams of distressing news, yet no one had to suffer the pain five-fold. Her granddaughter Josephine Warren has kept the 300 or so odd letters exchanged between the boys and their mother and sisters, which archivists have tried to put it up on the internet for the public to view, not only to get an insight into their suffering, but also the vast human toll behind the terrible statistics of World War One. Mrs Beechey unveiled a plaque at the Friesthorpe where they lived, but it is their letters that remain as a touching tribute to the terrible price of war paid by one family.
The soldiers did not only leave an emotional vacuum, but the absence of a large number of young men also created a gap in the physical needs of the women. A letter from Frau S to her husband’s commanding officer requests that her husband be granted “a leave of absence, namely, because of our sexual relationship. I would like to have my husband once for the satisfaction of my natural desires. I just can’t live like this anymore. I can’t stand it.......” This can also be accounted for the later drop in the birth rate and increase of homosexuality.
These tales of losses, of surviving with the pain and suffering, of having to live on while the men died on the war front, brings out the tragic state of the First World War. Homes were shattered, millions of lives were lost, and all the women could do was continue to shed tears through their losses. The heartrending stories of the tragedy of the women around the world did not come into view until after the war was over, which in turn did not bring the relief that they expected.
It was not merely a task of waiting that the women had to go through. With the sudden death of men, the job of the breadwinner of the family fell upon the women. The fathers and brothers went off to the war, and the children turned to their mothers for income. While continuing their role of the compassionate female figure they also turned into the dominant male figure of the family. Determined to do whatever they could to maintain the sanctity of their home, women stepped up to the challenge, and the employment of women in all spheres of the economy rose considerably.
P.S. This is part of an essay I wrote for a presentation in college. The other half was written by my partner and I do not have access to it. But i am proud of what I wrote and therefore wanted to publish it.
Hmm very nice…
ReplyDeleteThank you
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