Map circa 1872, showing Victoria Docks and the Thames Ironworks
One of our MA Naval History students, Paul O’Donnell, has recently had a blog published by the Churchill College Cambridge, whose archive he used for his dissertation research. His research there, using the papers of first Lord of the Admiralty Reginald McKenna, sheds new light on Arnold Hills, the eccentric chairman of Thames Iron Works, who were the last shipbuilders working on the Thames. It was ironical that this firm, one of the few firms capable of building Dreadnoughts, should have closed down in 1912, at the heart of the Dreadnought arms race. But as Paul explains, the company had an afterlife, as its works football team evolved into West Ham FC.
In the second in our series on First World War sources, second-year UoP student Charlotte Lewis discusses what can be learned from a letter by famed WWI poet Wilfred Owen to his mother Susan.
Whilst Wilfred Owen’s poetry is well known for describing the horrors of the First World War, his letters to his mother, Susan Owen, give the reader an insight into Owen’s personal experiences and reactions hiding behind his poetry. In light of this, this blog will focus on a letter written by Owen in February 1917 to his mother.[1] Through the analysis of this letter, this blog will try to convey not only its significant use in describing the conditions of the First World War, but also how it provides us with an understanding of Owen and his emotions reflected in his poetry, in particular his renowned poem Dulce et Decorum Est.[2]
The value of the content of Owen’s letter can only truly be understood when the conditions of trench warfare at this time have been fully acknowledged. Ashworth recognises that very early on in the war, at the end of the first battle of Ypres, the primary mode of warfare at the western front was static trench warfare.[3] During this time, armies were largely deadlocked and “movement was more often measured in yards than miles”.[4] This is clearly demonstrated in the opening sentence of this letter as Owen describes how “so little happens that I can’t keep up my instalments of blood-and-thunder literature”.[5] This line also reveals Owen’s relationship with descriptive writing as he writes “blood-and-thunder literature”, a genre of literature in which his Poem Dulce et Decorum Est conforms to in its description of the daily horrors experienced at the Western Front.[6] Potter argues that his letters from this time are “as evocative, shocking and profoundly moving as any of the poetry that his experiences inspired”.[7] For example, both the poem Dulce et Decorum Est and this letter portray a graphic imagery of fatigued, limping soldiers.[8] Owen describes in his letter how they marched “miserably slowly” as “some of the men could not wear boots” due to frost-bitten feet.[9] According to Ashworth, a trench foot was swollen and always painful.[10] There are strong parallels between this letter and the experiences described in Dulce et Decorum Est, supporting Rivers’ argument that his letters can be used as sources for his poems. However, whilst this letter does show clear similarities to his poem Dulce et decorum Est, it also shows a possible motivation for the creation of the poem.
A case of trench foot which required plastic surgery, Wellcome Institute photo no. L0025834
A theme presented in Owen’s Dulce et Decorum Est is his dissatisfaction with the portrayal of the western front through propaganda. In private through his letters, and public through his poem, Owen highlights his contempt for the image of war portrayed by the home front. Bebbington recalls that of the two British Museum drafts of Owen’s Dulce et Decorum Est, “one has the ‘dedication’ to ‘Jessie Pope, etc’”.[11] Pope frequently wrote jingoistic poetry as propaganda for newspapers and often portrayed an image of the war which was the polar opposite to that described by Owen in his poetry.[12] In his letter, Owen comments on the propaganda shown by the Daily Mirror, and how it “still depicts the radiant smiles of Tommies”.[13] This could be an indirect comment on the work of Jessie Pope and so this letter could act as a source for understanding the initial dedication of the poem to her, as well as the running theme of anger towards softened portrayals of war experiences which discredited and undermined the heroic nature of the soldiers. The perusal of this letter allows us to understand some of the multitude of emotions behind Owen as a poet through his description of soldiers’ daily experiences, whilst representing the realities of Trench warfare.[14]
The 2nd Manchesters capturing a German battery at Francilly Selency, April 1917 by Richard Woodville
However, when using this letter as a source, there are a number of considerations to take into account when assessing its use in understanding Owen’s experience of the war and associated emotions hiding behind his poetry.[15] Kerr acknowledges that Owen had an incredibly strong relationship with his mother, as he suggests that Susan Owen was the family’s still point and an “inner sanctuary”; one aspect of his devotion to her could be his willingness to “protect her from distress”.[16] Subsequently, we must consider whether Owen has refrained from describing the true nature of his experience at the time of the letter in order to protect his mother, and so this letter is less likely to emphasise the whole picture; reading the vivid details in the poem Dulce et Decorum Est it is possible to recognise that this letter might not contain the whole truth.[17] However, by using this letter as a source for understanding Owen’s poem, as well as understanding experiences of the First World War in general, it can be very useful in as much as it avoids popular memory.[18] Roper highlights that frequently other WWI sources such as memoirs and autobiographies can be influenced by public narratives created by popular fiction and television of what it means to be a soldier hero, whereas a letter is arguably free from this bias as it captures the moment in order to “communicate the self to the recipient”.[19] Thus, it would be beneficial to analyse Owen’s other letters alongside this letter in order to grasp a better perception.
Through analysis of Owen’s letter to his mother in 1917 we are able to develop a clearer understanding of Owen and his experiences of the war, providing a source for interpreting the emotions and messages conveyed through his poetry, in particular Dulce et Decorum est.[20] This letter offers a unique portrayal of the realities of warfare as well as an insight into Owen’s relationship with the war as a result of his experiences.[21] Whilst we are unable to gain a full understanding of Owen’s experiences through this single letter, it does offer a significant basis for a first understanding of Owen, and so we would benefit greatly from a comparative analysis of other letters written by Owen.
[1] Wilfred Owen, “‘Sunday February 18 1917’, Harold Owen and John Bell”, Wilfred Owen: Collected letters, (London: Oxford University Press, 1967), 435-436.
[2] Bryan Rivers, “Wilfred Owen’s Letter No. 486 as a Source for “Dulce et Decorum Est”, in ANQ: A Quarterly Journal of Short Articles, Notes and Reviews, vol. 21, (2014): 29.
[3] Tony Ashworth, Trench Warfare, 1914-1918: The Live and Let Live System (London: Pan Books, 2000), 2.
[11] W.G. Bebbington, “Jessie Pope and Wilfred Owen” in Ariel: a review of international English literature, Vol. 3, (1972): 82.
[12] Anderson Araujo, “Jessie Pope, Wilfred Owen, and the politics of pro patria mori in World War I poetry” in Media, War & Conflict, Vol. 7, (2014): 337
[14] Michele Kaltemback, “Wilfred Owen’s personality as revealed by his letters”, in Caliban, Vol. 10, (1973): 43; Owen, “’Sunday February 18 1917’”, 435-436.
[18] Michael Roper, “Re-remembering the Soldier Hero: the psychic and social construction of Memory in Personal Narratives of the Great War” in History Workshop Journal, vol. 50 (2000): 183
[19] Roper, “Re-remembering the Soldier Hero, 183; Penny Summerfield, Histories of the Self: Personal narratives and Historical practice, (Florida: Routledge, 2018), 22.
In the first of a series on First World War sources, in this blog second year UoP student Oliver Rooney discusses the experiences of Charles Wyndham Wynne, expressed through his letter to his aunt Sophia Sarah Wynne on the 13th October 1916, several months before his death in June 1917, as well as the historiography surrounding the importance and limitations of First World War letters. [1]
The atrocities of the First World War have been conveyed through personal letters between soldiers and their families. These personal sources provide historians with a first-hand understanding of the soldier’s experiences during wartime, and the emotions they conveyed and attempted to conceal from their letters.[2] Charles Wynne (1895-1917) was an Irish soldier who served as captain in the Royal Garrison Artillery during the First World War. Through regular correspondence between him and his mother, Alice Katherine Wynne, his letters have shown his journey throughout the war, from Fort Dunree in Belfast in 1915, to the 182nd Siege Battery in France by 1916.[3] However, his letter to his aunt on 13th October 1916, part of a collection digitised by Trinity College Dublin, contains a more brutal description of his experiences. On his arrival in France, Charles described the chaos left behind from the previous battery positions; “an old battlefield of the French, utter desolation and plenty of legs and arms and bones and boots”.[4] This description is explicit in telling the first-hand brutality of war, as Charles almost normalises the sight of death. Although, First World War historians argue that wartime letters were limited in describing the true nature of the trenches. Michael Roper indicates that there was “a relative absence of explicit descriptions of the horror of the trenches in British soldiers’ letters”, suggesting that letters avoided the truth to protect family members from the atrocities of war.[5] However Charles’s letter challenges such arguments, as his experiences of France were graphic and honest, describing the country as “an awful network of wires everywhere you go”.[6] Therefore, although letter writing during the First World War became a “mass cultural phenomenon”, the majority of wartime letters were not graphic in nature, letters like Charles’ were relatively uncommon. [7]
Soldiers of the Royal Garrison Artillery at the Battle of the Somme, November 1916.
When reading First World War letters, it is important for historians to understand where letters were placed in the context of the war. As for Charles Wynne’s letter, the 13th October 1916 is placed during the latter part of the Battle of the Somme and the Battle of Verdun; two of the most catastrophic battles of the war. This would explain the brutality of Charles’ experiences as described in his letter, and why everything was “in an awful confusion and muddle.”[8] Additionally, David Barton and Nigel Hall note that letters from the war hold forms of contextual understanding, by referring to the space and time of the writer and of the reader; two worlds invoked within the letter,
Charles in the brutality of war, and Sophia in the safety of home.[9] This idea indicates that wartime letters hold an insight into the life of a person, years after their death, whereby the historian can experience the same emotions felt by the first intended recipient, in this case Sophia Wynne.[10] They understand the same emotions that Sophia would have felt from reading his letter in 1916, to reading his letter in the present, although in hindsight, historians know the outcome of Charles’ death in 1917. Charles’ letter further describes the struggles of life in France, explaining to his aunt that she was “right about the mud in some of the trenches”, implying that she had warned him of the conditions that he would face during the war.[11] Megan Robertson argues that wartime letters imply a relationship, that establishes social contexts and connections within their content.[12] Thus, wartime letters like Charles’ are important for social historians as they display similarities in the relationships and emotions between the soldier and his family during the First World War, with people and their families in the present.[13]
The social context surrounding personal sources and wartime letters is important for social and cultural historians, as each letter displays a unique correspondence which provides questions about the emotions and motivations of the soldier, and what was included and concealed from each letter.[14] As for Charles’ letter, he describes himself as “a rotten correspondent”, but does not hide his morbid experiences, describing how he was told that “a leg was sticking out (of the mud) a mark used as a sign post for pointing out the way.” [15] Martha Hanna discusses how First World War epistolary was a means by which soldiers “maintained their civilian identity in the midst of war”: in Charles’ letter, he maintains his civilian identity while describing the barbarity of the war around him. His emotions are somewhat subdued from the letter, therefore, social historians need to analyse personal sources like these to understand how soldiers understood the nature of warfare and “their acceptance of the conduct of war.” [16] Moreover, Summerfield indicates that wartime letters were subject to censorship by the military authorities. Thus, she indicates that some historians are sceptical about the usefulness of war letters, suggesting that “few correspondents communicated the ‘reality’ of the frontline.”[17] Nonetheless, Charles as a wartime correspondent was useful in describing his personal experience of the “utter desolation” of the French battlefield, and the “plenty of legs & arms and bones)” that he witnessed, whereas other wartime correspondents from France may have been more implicit in their epistolary. [18]
To conclude, this blog has outlined the usefulness and limitations of First World War letters as personal sources for historical analysis, as correspondents on the front line often attempted to conceal their true emotions, and many letters from the war were absent of explicit descriptions of the trenches, likely due to censorship by the military authorities. [19] Charles Wynne’s’ letter, however, is useful in describing his personal account of the “desolation” of war, which provides historians with a broader context of the aftermath of First World War battles, such as the Battle of the Somme. [20] Overall, wartime epistolary faces limitations, as they were not intended to be read as historical sources, rather an insight into the soldier’s communications of life at war. Ultimately, letters convey a relationship between the soldier and his family, which establish social contexts of the First World War.[21]
[2] Penny Summerfield, Histories of the Self: Personal Narratives and Historical Practice, 1st ed. (London; Routledge, 2018), 32. In, Michael Roper, The Secret Battle. Emotional Survival in the Great War (Manchester; Manchester University Press, 2009), 21.
[7] Christa Hämmerle, ‘“You Let a Weeping Woman Call You Home?” Private Correspondences during the First World War in Austria and Germany’. In Rebecca Earle, Epistolary Selves: Letters and Letter-Writers, 1600-1945, (London: New York; Routledge, 1999), 153. In Summerfield, Histories of the Self, 28.
[9] David Barton and Nigel Hall, Letter Writing as a Social Practice (Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company, 2000), 6. In, Megan Robertson, “Epistolary Memory: First World War Letters to British Columbia”, Issue 182 (2014): 129.
[10] Miriam Dobson, “Varieties of primary sources and their interpretation”: Letters. In Reading Primary Sources: The Interpretation of Texts from Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century History, edited by Miriam Dobson and Benjamin Ziemann, (London: New York; Routledge, 2009), 57.
[16] Martha Hanna, “A Republic of Letters: The Epistolary Tradition in France during World War I”, American Historical Review, (2003): 1339; Summerfield, Histories of the Self, 28.
Emily Burgess, a third year history student at Portsmouth, describes some of the things she has learned and some of the amazing artefacts she has got to work with on a daily basis in over a year spent working as a volunteer first for the National Museum of the Royal Navy and then for the Royal Marines Museum. She is now devising her own projects and events for the museum and has found the experience invaluable to her studies for her degree.
Emily working with RMM medals collection.
During my first year at Portsmouth University I attended a history volunteer fair held in The Mary Rose Museum. It was there that I met my future supervisor and curator for the National Museum of the Royal Navy, Kate Braun. Soon enough I was shadowing her every movement and was able to do things I could only ever dream off as somebody utterly obsessed with history.
I started off using Adlib, the NMRN’s record system to document and quality check artefacts from the HMS Caroline, a decommissioned C-class light cruiser of the Royal Navy, which saw active service in both World War I and World War II. These artefacts were to be sent to Belfast to be put on display. I worked on this project for six months. Alongside this I met other curators and museum workers and I learnt a lot about the running of museums, particularly artefact handling and data collection. As I gained greater experience, I was invited to work on bigger projects such as exhibitions. Two of my favourites were The Jolly Rogers Exhibition, and The Jutland Exhibition. One of my fondest memories was working alongside conservator Kate Gill who I helped assess and pack a 104-year-old flag from the HMS Bellerophon which was present at the Battle of Jutland and was riddled with shrapnel holes. I learnt a lot from these exhibitions and began to understand how important teamwork and communication was when dealing with strict deadlines and unruly artefacts.
I was asked to transfer to the Royal Marines Museum and I quickly accepted. There I learnt how to handle weaponry and other dangerous artefacts, specifically shells, guns, and knives, filling out numerous risk assessments in the process. Here I learnt the importance of collections documentation and packing, and the safety precautions needed when dealing with hazardous objects. The artefacts ranged from 1860 to the present day and every day we’d discover a new object. This is one of the things I loved most about museum work. The artefacts within this museum were very personal, and by working extensively on the medals collection I gained a greater understanding of the experiences had by soldiers during the First and Second World War. This proved very helpful to my degree as I began to understand how material sources benefited historical study and expanded our understanding of contemporary events.
RMM Weapons Handling
My proudest moment came in my third year as I was invited to meet HRH Princess Anne for my work at the RMM. It is a moment I will never forget and will always be a highlight of my time here in Portsmouth. I have now volunteered at this museum for over a year and hope to work in the museum system one day.
My tutor Rob James, who was aware of my previous volunteer work helped me gain contact with Felicity Wood, The D-Day Story’s Public Participation Officer. At the end of my second year I began working alongside her, helping with events and marketing, specifically for the run up to D-Day 75.
D-Day 75Emily meeting Princess Anne
Through this position I gained a greater understanding of the public side of museum work. After D-Day 75 I helped with events ranging from touch tours for the visually impaired to autism friendly events. I worked on social media analytics and wrote a report that was sent to the National Heritage Lottery Fund concerning the museum’s progress. One of my favourite moments was a joint event held with Bletchley Park where I got to play with an enigma machine. By working this event I realised how important it was for museums to support and work with each other. Recently I was granted funding to put on my own event under Felicity’s supervision. It was aimed at children and families and gave them the opportunity to make Second World War inspired Christmas decorations. I enjoyed doing this and it gave me the opportunity and freedom to devise my own project, and see it come to life. I am currently helping with the LCT 7074, a landing craft tank carrier that was present at the D-Day landings and is currently in Portsmouth Naval Base.
Visit to LCT 7074
By working in all three museums I have learnt more than I could have ever hoped for. I have learnt how museums run behind the scenes through curatorial work and archiving, and I have developed skills in marketing and public participation. As a student these experiences have proved invaluable and I encourage anyone interested in museum work to take any opportunities offered to you through your tutors, or externally through volunteer fairs.
Benjamin Locke, a second year History student at the University of Portsmouth, has written the following blog entry on Warlingham War Memorial for the Introduction to Historical Research module. Benjamin considers the messages provided by the memorial’s imagery and how they reflect the social expectations of the time of its unveiling. The module is co-ordinated by Dr Maria Cannon, Lecturer in Early Modern History at Portsmouth.
‘Heritage is the valorisation and preservation by individuals and groups of traces of the past that are thought to embody their cultural identity’. [1] The values and practices of heritage preservation are determined by major political and economic trade-offs, both of which determine what sites and properties are to be preserved. [2] In this blog, I will assess the role collective memory played in the foundation of the Warlingham War Memorial, and if the 1920s values on which it was built can come into question. This is important in understanding the cultural significance of the memorial. Maurice Walbwachs’ quote ‘We can understand each memory as it occurs in individual thought only if we locate each within the thought of the corresponding group’summarises how assessing collective memory can help interpret and understand its cultural significance and influence. [3] In this blog I will also determine whether the memorial is successful in its original role as a site of remembrance for those who tragically lost their lives in the Great War, and its greater cultural meaning and representation for contemporary British society.
Warblingham War Memorial, Tandridge, Surrey Image: iwm.org.co.uk
Warlingham War Memorial was designed by John Edward Taylerson and was originally unveiled on the 4th December 1921 to commemorate the First World War. A plaque was later placed in 1946 in honour of those who fought and died in the Second World War. It consists of a tall column, with a high-standing soldier sheltering a helpless woman and the baby in her arms. The role that collective memory has on remembrance and how this comes into play is questionable. Halbwachs argues that we must ‘put ourselves in the position of others’ and ‘tread the same path’ to really understand remembrance. [4] Does the memorial really represent how contemporary British people viewed the war? It seems to portray the war as a male sacrifice for well-being of women and children. Angela Woollacott argues that women’s participation in the war effort was lamented by guilt, anger and adoration that their brothers/fiancées were evoked in their role as warriors, which ‘subsumed their own novel freedoms’. [5] She uses the memoir of Peggy Hamilton, a middle-class woman, who wrote that women suffered an ‘inferiority complex’ which put a barrier of ‘indescribable experience’ between men and women. [6] The Warlingham Memorial reflects this, with its lack of acknowledgement of the great sacrifices’ women made to the war effort in favour of the valorisation of the male soldier. The hopeless woman on the memorial is in no way a representation on the role of women, or how collective memory today views the role of women in the war. However, class differences are what really distinguishes people from their roles in war. A middle-class woman’s experience would arguably be completely different to the experiences lived by working women.
The roles of war memorials are to do the dead justice and to make sure that we follow their example and ensure that they did not die in vain. Alex King perfectly summarises this duty, saying that it is ‘necessary to understand what the dead had died for and to follow the example they had set. The dead had died for others, and by emulating them they were, indeed, worthy of the sacrifices the dead had made on their behalf’. [7] The memorial does a successful job in showing that soldiers died to protect their families. The message the memorial emits is powerful and successfully aids our memory in the sacrifices made, even if the message that can be seen to invalidate the role of women. Despite its success in acting as a memorial for the fallen, is it dangerous for us to entirely take in the messages, which according to some revisionist historians are inaccurate portrayals composed of myths? King argues that commemoration had always offered a political platform, which had become available to mass organisations like the British Legion and the League of Nations. [8] The latter of these organisations would have wanted to preserve the status quo and deflect any criticism of the war, which was directed to the ruling classes, by instead portraying the war as a noble cause of death for the good of Europe and everyone at home. Ross Wilson supports this argument, believing that interrogation must be done when thinking about the message that memorials portray. However, he argues that myths in popular memory of the war are widely known by the public, and that the audiences do not passively consume everything they see. [9] Indeed, Wilson uses the popular television series Blackadder Goes Forth to show that there is an understanding of what the Great War was like, as it contains suffering soldiers, incompetent officers, atrocious conditions and pointless military advances. [10]
In conclusion, the war memorial successfully acts as a symbol of remembrance for those that fell in the First World War. It creates an image of noble sacrifice, and despite any opinions on the causes, justifications and pointlessness of the war, it is clear that many of these soldiers fought and died for their country, and will ensure that the people of Warlingham will never forget the sacrifices of combatants in both the First and Second World Wars. However, the connection between politics and remembrance has meant that the role of women during the war has been diminished, with the memorial’s portrayal of the woman as being helpless, weak and being shielded by nothing but the men fighting on the front line. By today’s standards, this is not a completely successful memorial in showing the great sacrifices that the whole of British society had made to the war effort. It is important for us to not judge societal norms through the lenses of today, and we must remember that gender roles and norms were completely different to what they are now. Nicholas J. Saunders’ remarks – ‘While memorials are supposed to serve as tangible weighty structures denoting consensus, they can divide a community as much is it could unite’ – perfectly details how the politics in memory can be polarising. [11] The memorial is overall, very moving and sad, but it makes me wonder that if it were to be situated in central London rather than a village in Tandridge, would it prove too controversial and raise debate?
Notes
[1] Yudhishthir Raj Isar, Dacia Viejo-Rose and Helmut Anheier, Heritage, Memory and Identity (London: Sage Publications, 2011), 3.
[2] Isar, Viejo-Rose and Anheier, Heritage, Memory and Identity, 4.
[3] Maurice Halbwachs, On Collective Memory (London: University Chicago Press, 1992), 53.
[4] Halbwachs, On Collective Memory, 53.
[5] Miriam Cooke and Angela Woollacott, Gendering War Talk (Winchester: Princeton University Press, 1993) Chapter 6: Angela Woollacott, 128.
[6] Cooke and Woollacott, Gendering War Talk, 128.
[7] Alex King, Memorials of the Great War in Britain: The Symbolism and Politics of Remembrance (Oxford: Berg, 1998), 155.
[8] King, Memorials of the Great War in Britain, 165.
[9] Bart Ziino, Remembering the First World War (Oxfordshire: Routledge, 2015) Chapter 3: Ross Wilson, 135.
[10] Ziino, Remembering the First World War, 140.
[11] Nicholas J. Saunders, Matters of Conflict: Material Culture, Memory and the First World War (London: Routledge, 2004), 134.
Rhea Nana, a second year History student at the University of Portsmouth, has written the following blog entry on a letter sent by Marie Martin, a nurse in the First World War, for the Introduction to Historical Research module. Rhea reveals how personal sources such as letters can be one of the only places to find certain insights into the emotions of those experiencing the war. The module is co-ordinated by Dr Maria Cannon, Lecturer in Early Modern History at Portsmouth.
When analysing wars, immediate connotations come with it, such as suffering, separation and bad conditions. These connotations are expressed in the letters written from Marie Martin, the daughter of an Irish family. Marie had been sent away in 1915 to perform her duties of being a nurse in Malta during the First World War. This blog will concentrate on a specific letter sent by Marie, explaining her life on a daily basis and also how letters, though selective, provide an insight of events and emotions. Ross F. Collins’ views on women in the First World War was that ‘they were needed in war work and many were employed, thousands as nurses’; this immediately highlights that women were a great asset to the war. [1] However, women rarely had the chance to speak out about how they were feeling when working in the war, unless it was in private, otherwise they would end up ‘in jail or receive great condemnation’. [2] This letter does have its limitations into reaching a full insight into the world of working war women, but the blog essentially exposes how women in the war managed to balance their duties and prove a great asset in the First World War.
This letter not only presents the struggles of a young woman carrying out her daily job as a nurse; it also illustrates how she tried to keep in contact with her mother. Her first few lines claim that ‘My last letter was the maddest letter I have ever written. I started it so often’. [3] This underlines that working women take on a lot of responsibility and perhaps do not have time for themselves. Susan R. Grayzel reinforces this argument as she claims that ‘nursing exposed many relatively sheltered young women to some of the war’s most visceral horrors, and in doing so, changed their lives’. [4] By describing the war as life changing it implies that possibly Marie did not know what she was getting herself into as she now had to sacrifice her own personal time to even write a simple letter to her mother.
Therefore, this reveals that Marie could have been in a rush when writing the letter and so potentially selective about what she wrote, henceforth being a clear limitation too. Also, the fact that Grayzel uses the noun ‘horror’ to refer to the war could give the impression that she only wants to write about the positive aspects about being a nurse in the war. Historians in turn can use this primary source by analysing the relationship between mothers and daughters in general. Barbara Caine finds that due ‘to a turn in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, young women were open to more opportunities resulting in daughters being more knowledgeable and established’. [5] Thus, this personal source instantly highlights that letters are able to provide information on the relationship between family members as well as an insight to how war duties were critical.
The conditions in the war were constantly fluctuating and even though Marie was not serving on the front lines, she also had to experience the change in weather and the bloodied patients who were rushed in. Marie was no longer in a state of relative stability; her life in Ireland was a complete contrast to her ‘ankles deep in water from the storm’ and ‘only a tent to eat our meals in’. [6] This stresses the idea that women in the war had to adapt and endure the conditions as much as men did, which in turn allows historians to recognise how women were taking on more responsibilities. This is reinforced by Gail Braybon who finds that it ‘revolutionised men’s minds and their conception of the sort of work of which the ordinary everyday women were capable’. [7] Consequently, women were illustrating that they were progressing in the war effort and almost seen as an equal by men.
Furthermore, historians can focus on the usefulness of personal sources, especially when it comes to letters. As Miriam Dobson and Benjamin Ziemann recognise, ‘letters are praised for the human dimension they bring to history, allowing people to capture raw experiences of the past’. [8] This displays that Marie’s description of her time as a nurse was genuine and because this can be classed as a private letter, she is able to expose more detail. Additionally, in the past women ‘would only send letters to boost morale for men’ but during the world war ‘it was used for upholding social networks and keeping relations.’ [9] Thus, Margaretta Jolly demonstrates that women were able to use letters effectively, which not only showed that they were advancing in the war, but that letters were used for a social purpose too.
The small details within this letter written by Marie only disclose a miniscule amount of true emotion and how effective a letter can be. The analysis of the letter essentially offers an insight into the deeper meaning of what it meant to be a working woman in the war and the responsibility that they had to take on. The letter allows historians to find alternative conclusions to how women were treated in the war and the impact of disclosed information between family members. Overall, this work has presented that letters are a gateway to discovering more information than intended, and that emotions in letters do come across as genuine, especially in Marie’s case. Letters from women can be compared in order to validate their shared experiences of the war and are thus a great asset.
Notes
[1] Ross F. Collins, World War 1: Primary documents on events from 1914-1919 (ABC-CLIO, LLC, 2007), 285.
[4] Susan R. Grayzel, Women and The First World War (Routledge, Taylor and Francis, 2002), 37.
[5] Barbara Caine, ‘Letters between Mothers and Daughters’, Women’s History Review, no 233 (2015): 6.
[6] Letters 1916-1923. ‘Letter from Marie Martin to her mother’.
[7] Gail Braybon, Women Workers in the First World War (Routledge, 2012), 157.
[8] Miriam Dobson and Benjamin Ziemann, Reading Primary Sources : The Interpretation of Texts from Nineteenth and Twentieth Century History ( Routledge, 2008), 61.
[9] Margaretta Jolly, In Love and Struggle: Letters in Contemporary Feminism (Columbia University Press, 2008), 36.
