Cowards: Order of the White Feather

By Delia DeLeest

Today's post isn't necessarily about cowardice as much as people's perception of who is a coward.

There are many reasons, even during wartime, why a man would be denied access into the military--medical, mental, a pressing need to remain home for family, etc. Every person has their own story, and only they will know all the intimate details. It's not for an outsider to make decisions regarding another person's life, nor is it their duty to criticize the decisions made by others, especially when they don't even know that person. None of these facts seemed to bother the members of The Order of the White Feather.

The signification of a white feather to mean cowardice came from the world of cockfighting. A purebred gamecock will not have any visible white feathers, so if a fighting bird displayed any white plumage, especially in the tail feathers, it was believed to be inferior. In a sport where determination and aggressiveness in an animal is highly prized, to have an animal display any sort of cowardice was the worst sort of plight. By the turn of the twentieth century, a white feather became commonly known as an accusation of cowardice among men as well.

In 1914, at the dawn of World War I in Great Britain, Admiral Charles Fitzgerald, along with support from author Mrs. Humphrey Ward, initiated The Order of the White Feather. This organization's sole purpose was to coerce able-bodied men to enter the military. When they saw a man out in public in civilian clothes, women were asked to hand them a white feather in order to shame them into doing their civic duty and take up arms against the Kaiser.

Right or wrong, the campaign was affective. So many men were pressured to join up that the government was having a hard time keeping enough men on the home front. Soon, Home Secretary Reginald McKenna began issuing King and Country badges to government employees to indicate that they too, were serving the war effort, though at home. Before long, he realized that veterans also needed to be protected from the feathered onslaught and issued the Silver War Badge, indicating that its wearer had been honorably discharged from the military due to injury or illness.

Not everyone supported the Order. Writer Compton MacKenzie had no patience with these judgmental feather handlers and claimed that "idiotic young women were using white feathers to get rid of boyfriends of whom they were tired." One noted pacifist at the time claimed he received so many feathers he had enough to make a fan.

Whether you agree with their actions or not, it can’t be denied that The Order of the White Feather definitely did their part to swell the ranks of the British military during The Great War.

Delia DeLeest is fascinated by all things 1920s. She suspects she was once a flapper or, more probably, a bootlegger in a previous life. Her third 1920s era book, NOT LOOKING FOR TROUBLE, is available now from The Wild Rose Press.

Movie Adaptations: Brideshead Revisited

By Anna C. Bowling

For me, below is not a photograph of Castle Howard. This is and forever more will be, Brideshead, physical home of the Flyte family and spiritual home of one Charles Ryder, pulled back always by a twitch upon the thread, no matter where he might be in the physical world.


This entry refers to the 1981 Granada miniseries adaptation of Evelyn Waugh's novel, starring Jeremy Irons, Anthony Andrews and Diana Quick. I didn't catch it the first time out, which was on PBS for those of us in the USA, but a few years back, I was in the library and there it was on the library shelf. As I've always had a soft spot for British between-the-wars stories, and was in desperate need of a meaty period drama, I checked it out and popped the first disk into my laptop the very first second I could.

So began several days of spending every spare minute rolling around in the sumptuous feast of characters, setting, zeitgeist, and words. I sought out the book shortly thereafter, and I count myself a conscientious objector to the 2008 movie version. Sorry, Emma Thompson. Why? Apart from a brunet Sebastian being out of the question thanks to Anthony Andrews' iconic performance, I had read several reviews of the new version and came to the conclusion that it would be leaving out too much.

The story opens in the midst of WWII, when stiff-upper-lipped Charles Ryder, a British military officer, takes his men to an undisclosed location where they will be housed for the foreseeable future. After a mustard gas drill on a train, Charles, weary in body and soul, arrives at the secret place, only to have its very familiarity strike him harder than any enemy's blow. Oh yes, he knows this place. Brideshead, a once great house, now fallen on hard times, is where he must continue to carry on. Through Charles, the viewer is yanked back through the years, to when Charles made his first tie to Brideshead, meeting the charming, beautiful, and ultimately doomed Sebastian Flyte, younger son of the house, when both were at university.

This is an epic in the truest sense of the word, and as with many of my favorite stories, is a love story on several different levels. Between Charles and Sebastian? Well, yes, and one may argue whether the love was platonic or romantic or sexual or some combination of all three, but that's not the whole story. Between Charles and Sebastian's sister, Julia? Well, yes, and star-crossed lovers indeed they seem, but that's not the whole story either. Between Charles and the Flytes, the aristocratic family who symbolize the ages old grandeur that seemed to be beating a hasty retreat after the Great War (and before and during WWII, as the story progresses); a world which Charles has seen only from the outside? Well, yes, and there the story has its heart and its substance, but it's more than that as well. The Flytes are Catholic, Charles an atheist, yet another difference between himself and this other world, and the spiritual is a strong but subtle thread throughout this tale.

Viewers will identify with Charles, a young man who takes this home-not-his-own and bonds with it. There he indulges his passions; whether for Sebastian, for Julia, for a class he was never born to, for a world rapidly vanishing, for his own artistic leanings. In this last, he leaves his literal mark, painting murals on the walls of the great house, a touchstone to prove he was there...and how much the world and the house have changed in his absence when he returns, mature and battle-scarred.

Through Charles, we see Brideshead as it was, in vivid contrast to the way it is, as his memories takes us from the indulgent days of youth to the hard-learned experiences of life, all bringing him back to where his journey started. Brideshead itself is a character, from Charles' murals to the grand fountain, and I will readily admit to actually crying when I saw what had happened to both in his absence. I will admit as well to being bolstered that Hawkins, Sebastian and Julia's old nanny, was still alive and still in residence, always a thread connecting present to past, always there to bolster and point a way through days to come.

I fell in love with Brideshead, the story and the house, the same time Charles did, rounding a bend in the road and there it rose before him, all the splendor his heart had yearned for his entire life. Part of me wants to jump in there and find a between the wars story of my own, and if one does come, I won't turn it away. That last gasp of grandeur, that balancing on the ledge between the world that was and the world that would be speak to me, Brideshead, both house and story standing as symbol.


Have any fictional houses become a home of sorts for you? What movie or miniseries has tempted you to try writing in a period you hadn't tried before?

Writing historical romances allows Anna C. Bowling to travel through time on a daily basis and make the voices in her head pay rent. Her current release, ORPHANS IN THE STORM, is available from Awe-Struck E-books.

Women Did It Better: Pioneer Codebreakers

By Carrie Lofty

Bletchley Park in England became the hub of Allied cryptography during WWII, famous for cracking Germany's Enigma code. The intelligence organization housed there, known as the Government Code and Cypher School, was staffed by more than 80% women. But two of the most dynamic and influential female codebreakers of the era were from the United States: Anges Meyer Driscoll and Elizebeth Friedman.

Illinois-born Anges Meyer Driscoll enlisted in the US Navy in 1918, just after the United States entered WWI. With her university background in foreign languages and mathematics, she entered as a chief yeoman and was assigned to the Code and Signal section of the Director of Naval Communications.

Emerging cryptographic methods included the invention and implementation of rotor machines to tackle mathematically-based codes--machines that were, in essence, proto-computers. Agnes was a tremendous advocate of this new technology and developed one of the Navy's first such machines, called "CM," during WWI. Thirty years of work on Japanese naval codes resulted in several considerable breakthroughs, including JN-25, the Japanese fleet's operational code. After Agnes and her team cracked JN-25, the post-Pearl Harbor Navy was able to out-maneuver the Japanese fleet.

Agnes also assisted in the Navy's attempt to pick apart Enigma, but that responsibility was eventually turned over to Bletchley Park. Following her retirement from the Navy after more than 30 years of service, she joined the NSA (National Security Agency) in 1952. She was buried in Arlington after her death in 1971 and was inducted into the NSA's Hall of Fame in 2000.

Indiana-born Elizebeth Friedman introduced her husband, renowned codebreaker William F. Friedman, to the field of cryptology--a passion they would share throughout their 52 years of marriage. She spoke Greek, Latin and German upon graduating from college with a degree in literature. Her love of Shakespeare earned her a job at the US intelligence facility known as Riverbank, where she initially studied whether Shakespeare's plays had actually been written by Sir Francis Bacon. Elizebeth's skills with language and the detection of patterns and anomalies eventually landed her a place at the forefront of Riverbank's juvenile codebreaking operations, including deciphering Prohibition-era codes used by gangsters.

Elizebeth and her husband left Riverbank in 1921 to found the War Department's Signals Intelligence Service, which William headed for 25 years. Elizebeth's skills at Prohibition-based decryptions were so in demand that she convinced Congress in the early 1930s of the need to train more people like her. Additional cryptoanalysts on the government payroll freed her and her husband to tackle more anomalous codes and, unbeknownst to them, to hone their skills for the conflict to come. Even being unfamiliar with a language did not stop her from applying mathematics and logic, as was exemplified by her decryption of a Mandarin Chinese code in a 1937 Canadian opium smuggling ring. She became the expert witness of choice in any trial involving the analysis of broken codes, and traveled extensively to help secure these convictions.

During WWII, Elizebeth was responsible for deciphering the codes that would eventually find Japanese spy Velvalee Dickinson, the notorious "Doll Woman," guilty of wartime censorship violation (a plea bargain down from espionage, which would've brought her the death penalty). Elizebeth and her husband were key players in negotiating with Bletchley Park to share information between Allied codebreaking operations. They exchanged deciphering machines and intelligence that resulted in many breakthroughs in the European Theater. Elizebeth's Coast Guard unit at one point attached to the Navy where she and her team solved one of the Enigma codes used by German submarines.

After the war, Elizebeth designed security measures for the Intenrational Monetary Fund and, with her husband, co-authored The Shakespearean Ciphers Examined, which revisited her early love for Shakespeare and the mysteries of his authorship. She died in 1980 at the age of 88 and is remembered as the first female American codebreaker.

Disasters: The Spanish Flu

By Delia DeLeest

In the fall of 1918, WWI was winding down and people thought it was all "over, over there," but a bigger, more deadly enemy, one that didn't use bombs or bullets was taking over the world. It was called The Spanish Flu and it knew no boundaries and didn't play by any rules.

The first wave of the outbreak happened in March of 1918 and a second, more deadly wave occurred in October of the same year. More American soldiers died of the influenza than were killed in action – one in fifteen of the American men stationed in Europe died of it, overall, ten times more Americans were killed by the flu than in the war. On a single day in October, the fifteenth, 1,500 Berliners died of the disease and in the month of October, London lost 2225 of its citizens to the same. This was more than all the deaths from four years of German bombing raids over Britain.

It wasn't just happening in Europe either. Nearly 2/3 of the Eskimos living on the coast of Labrador, 20% of the population of Kimberly, South Africa, and 90% of the population of Western Samoa all were lost to the plague. There's no exact number of the deaths caused by the flu, but it's estimated at somewhere between 20 and 50 million people worldwide.

Unlike many diseases, the Spanish flu preyed on the young and healthy; most of its victims were people aged 20-40. The virus affected a person's immune system, making it go into overdrive, thus, the healthier your immune system, the deadlier the virus. A person could be struck by the flu and within hours be dead.

You'd think from the name that this strain of the influenza originated in Spain, but in fact, it struck both the U.S and the rest of Europe before arriving in Spain. But because Spain's news wasn't censored, the papers were much more open and forthcoming about the effects and spreading of the disease, and when the Spanish king became gravely ill and was one of the world's first most prominent victims of the bug, thus receiving widespread news coverage, it was erroneously assumed that Spain was the birthplace of the pandemic. As a matter of fact, no one ever actually pinpointed the exact origin of the flu and there's been guesses as varied as China and Kansas.

Though the war didn't cause the flu, it certainly helped spread it. The back and forth travel of soldiers between countries and continents helped fling the germs worldwide in a much speedier fashion than it would have otherwise.

Then, just as quickly as it appeared, it stopped. After killing 3-6% of the world's population in a matter of months, October being the deadliest, by the end of November, it had almost entirely disappeared. Though no one is sure why, it's suspected that the virus eventually mutated to a less lethal strain, which is common among flu viruses.

A child's jump rope jingle from the time sums up the suddenness of an influenza attack:
"I had a little bird
Its name was Enza
I opened the window
And In-flu-Enza."

Disasters: RMS Lusitania

By Isabel Roman

NOTICE!

TRAVELLERS intending to embark on the Atlantic voyage are reminded that a state of war exists between Germany and her allies and Great Britain and her allies; that the zone of war includes the waters adjacent to the British Isles; that, in accordance with formal notice given by the Imperial German Government, vessels flying the flag of Great Britain, or any of her allies, are liable to destruction in those waters and that travellers sailing in the war zone on the ships of Great Britain or her allies do so at their own risk.

This ominous and foreshadowing warning was printed in all the New York newspapers three weeks before what would be the RMS Lusitania's final Atlantic crossing. The torpedoing of the Lusitania became one of the major factors for the US's entrance into the WWI theater of war.

It is probably true that the RMS Lusitania was carrying munitions to aid Britain in their fight against Germany but the attack on one of the world's most luxurious cruise liners, especially with the loss of RMS Titanic so fresh in the memories of the public, was a catastrophic miscalculation on Germany's part.

Initially, the German's defended their right when in a state of war to attack any enemy vessel. However, it soon became apparent that the world was against their position and in true back-pedalling style they reversed their position and agreed on rules of engagement. The Lusitania sank in just 18 minutes. In six minutes the forecastle was underwater. Of the 1900+ passengers, 1,195 died. The ship was just 18 miles from the coast of Ireland.

Germany justified it at the time by saying the Lusitania carried weapons (which she did) but the public didn't know this and so the outcry from both Germany, Britain, and America was immense. Her cargo had included an estimated 4,200,000 rounds of rifle cartridges, 1,250 empty shell cases, and 18 cases of non-explosive fuses, all listed in the manifest, but the cartridges were not officially classed as ammunition by the Cunard Line. (Various theories have been put forward over the years that she had also carried undeclared high explosives that were detonated by the torpedo and helped to sink her, but this has never been proven.)

Eventually, the German government issued a statement describing what the ship carried and how it had warned people not to travel on luxury ships during time of war, and the tide of German sentiment turned, but only slightly. No one advocated the killing of non-combatants. German's allies, Turkey and Austria-Hungry, criticized the sinking. It did outrage America, which was not ready to enter into any kind of global conflict, and President Wilson issued three increasingly strongly worded notes to the German government, with the last saying: the US would regard any subsequent sinkings as deliberately unfriendly.

In 1967 the wreck of the Lusitania was sold by the Liverpool & London War Risks Insurance Association to former US Navy diver John Light for £1,000. Gregg Bemis became a co-owner of the wreck in 1968, and by 1982 had bought out his partners to become sole owner. He subsequently went to court in England in 1986, the US in 1995, and Ireland in 1996 to ensure that his ownership was legally in force.

Dynasties: The Roosevelts

By Carrie Lofty

While most people know that the United States has had two presidents named Roosevelt, very few can identify how they were related.

"Roosevelt" means "Rose of the Fields" in Dutch. The first Roosevelt, a Dutchman named Claes van Rosevelt, arrived in Nieuw Amsterdam in the middle of the 17th century. He bought a twenty-acre farm in mid-town Manhattan, including the site of the Empire State Building. By the 18th century, however, the family divided into two branches: Johannes Roosevelt (1689-1750) founded the clan in Oyster Bay, New York, while his younger brother, James Jacobus Roosevelt (1692-1776), founded the Hyde Park branch.

Fast forward a hundred years and you'll find that the Roosevelts were incredibly influential in New York, successful in business, and active in politics (on opposing sides: the Oyster Bay family became Republicans after the Civil War, while the Hyde Park membership remained Democrats). Among their number included an inventor, an Assistant Secretary of the Navy, a portrait painter, the co-founder of the Bank of New York, an opera singer in Paris, a diplomat, the wife of a Massachusetts governor, a famous poet and orator, a pianist and composer, a gold medal-winning yachtsman, and an Archbishop of Baltimore.

Theodore Roosevelt, 26th President of the United States, was born in 1858. A sickly child, he learned all about the natural sciences and history before applying himself toward growing physically strong. He became an avid boxer when he attended Harvard. After serving as a Lieutenant Colonel in the US military during the Spanish-American War, he was elected vice president. William McKinley was assassinated in 1901, which made Roosevelt the youngest man ever to assume the presidency. He was 42.

Theodore's brother Elliott was two years his junior. Elliott sired three daughters, one of whom was Anna Eleanor Roosevelt. Her Uncle Teddy, while he was still president, gave Eleanor away when she married Franklin Delano Roosevelt of the Hyde Park Roosevelts. Their marriage not only solidified a political dynasty but reunited the families. (Here they're pictured courting in 1903.)

If you do the math, Theodore and Franklin were fifth cousins, which meant they were more closely related by marriage than by blood.

Franklin Roosevelt, of course, went on to set his own records as the 32nd President of the United States. He was elected to more terms (four) and served more years in office (twelve) than any other leader, and presided over two monumental crises in US history: the Great Depression and World War II. He remained a Democrat, in keeping with the rest of the Hyde Park branch, but his left-wing policies single-handedly shifted the political spectrum so that "Democrat" came to mean "liberal."

The Roosevelts' children did not shirk service to their country just because of their influential fathers. Teddy's son, Theodore Roosevelt, Jr., went on to become a brigadier general. He and his brothers Kermit and Archibald served in both world wars. Their youngest brother, Quentin, was killed in action over France in 1918. All four of FDR's sons served during WWII: James in the Marine Corps, Franklin Jr. and John in the Navy, and Elliott in the US Army Air Corps.

While Teddy's and FDR's offspring have not achieved the stellar successes of their forebears, there are plenty of Roosevelts to tip the odds of future achievement in their favor. For example, Teddy Roosevelt sired six children by two wives, who then bore 11 grandchildren. Not bad, but FDR and Eleanor Roosevelt had them beat. To quote Wikipedia, their five surviving children produced among them "...nineteen marriages, fifteen divorces, and twenty-nine children."

We can assume that the Roosevelts will be a part of American life for generations to come--if not in prominent political placements, then in the myriad towns (at least ten), schools (six institutes of higher learning, plus countless grade schools), streets, buildings, and public works named after these two incredibly influential leaders.

Book Release: Eye of the Beholder

This week we're talking to Delia DeLeest, a long-time contributor whose book EYE OF THE BEHOLDER is now available in print and in Kindle. Today's she's joining us to discuss the Roaring 20s and to give away a copy.

A marriage of convenience isn't what Adeline Pierce had in mind for her life, especially since she was practically engaged to the man of her dreams. But, time is running out for her critically ill brother, who needs to move to a warm dry climate or face certain death. A move of that magnitude requires a lot of money--money her family doesn't have.

When Will Denning, a man physically and emotionally scarred from his time in the trenches during World War I, offers her family the money they need in exchange for her hand in marriage, she feels she has no other option. Learning to love Will is hard enough, but it's made even more difficult by the fact that her former love is determined to do whatever it takes to drive them apart, including murder.

***

Why the 1920s?

There's a variety of reasons why I write books set in America in the 1920s.

Most people know very little about the Jazz Age, and what they do know mostly comes from gangster movies. But the 1920s are so much more than Al Capone and bootleg whiskey.

It was a fascinating time to be a woman in America. All the old rules and restrictions were thrown out the window and not only women, but the population in general experienced a vast new freedom unknown in previous generations. Corsets and high-buttoned shoes were discarded, replaced by knickers, tube dresses and brassieres. Couples were no longer required to sit nicely in father's front parlor, but had the freedom of the road to go to dance marathons, silent movies or to just park on some deserted road and neck. People no longer had to work from dawn to dark to feed themselves. The ordinary Joe had something he never did before--free time. Time to watch Douglas Fairbanks swashbuckling his way across the silver screen, to go on car trips around the country or to take part in some of the ridiculous fads sweeping the nation, like flagpole sitting and dancing the Charleston.

It was also a time of great political upheaval. President Warren Harding brought in the decade with one of the most corrupt administrations of all time. He was followed by "Silent" Calvin Coolidge, known more for his dry one-liners than any political stance he'd taken. Then, there was poor old Herbert Hoover, the man many blamed when the excesses of the decade came crashing down around the country's ears in 1929. The Teapot Dome Scandal, the Red Scare and the Ku Klux Klan all had their names emblazoned in the headlines of the nation's newspapers and tabloids were filling the country's previously unknown need for sensationalized gossip.

With all this excitement going on, instead of wondering why I would write things set in the 1920s, maybe we should be wondering why more people don't.

Tell us about EYE OF THE BEHOLDER.

After falling in love with Gerard Butler's Phantom of the Opera, I started wondering how I could bring the Phantom to the 1920s, and William Denning was born.

Injured horribly during WWI, Will returned back to the US, only to watch his family die in the influenza epidemic of 1918. Alone and shunned by society, he became a hermit. It was only his desire to keep the Denning name alive that made him leave his sheltered existence and search out a wife.

Desperate for the money needed to keep her sick brother alive, Adeline Pierce reluctantly accepts the marriage proposal that is more like a business proposition. Leaving her family, and the man who loves her behind, she goes to make a married life with the lonely, bitter man who became her husband.

Excerpt:

Once in the house, she closed the door securely behind her, then watched out the window as the car sat there for a minute, then slowly pulled away. She jumped about a foot when her mother's voice came from right behind her.

"Where have you been? We were beginning to worry about you. Was that a car dropping you off?"

"Um, yes it was."

Her father entered the room and she tried casually making her way around him and up the stairs to her room before she could be questioned further. It didn't work.

"Who were you with?" Her mother asked. "Was it Mic? Why didn't he come in?"

"No, it wasn't Mic." She tried to escape once again, but her father put a hand on her arm and stopped her.

"Who were you with, Adeline?"

"William Denning," she muttered as she studied the floor.

"William Denning? The man who gave us that insulting offer? What were you doing with him?" Her father's voice was ratcheting up to a roar.

"Oh Adeline, you didn't." Her mother looked at her in shocked dismay.

"We're getting married Friday evening."

Dead silence filled the air for about fifteen seconds, then her father exploded. "Absolutely not! I refuse to let you marry that man, no matter how bad we need the money. You will not sell yourself off just so we can pay a few bills."

"It's more than a few bills and you know it, Daddy." She looked up from the floor and into her father's eyes. "This is a matter of Jimmy's life."

"But this is marriage, Adeline, a lifelong commitment. You'd be sacrificing your life, your chance for happiness."

"I have the ability to help Jimmy, to give him the climate and medical care he needs to live. If I denied him that for my own selfish reasons, do you think I could ever be happy anyway?" Her throat grew tight with unshed tears as she pleaded with her eyes for her father to understand.

"Refusing to marry a complete stranger is not a selfish reason. I can't let you--"

"Please Daddy, I'm an adult, making an adult's decision. Let me do this." The tears won their battle and sprung into her eyes as she looked at her father. "I'm scared enough the way things are, please don't make this harder for me."

***

Thanks for stopping by, Delia. If you'd like a chance to win a print copy of EYE OF THE BEHOLDER, leave an answer to the following question: what comes to mind when you think of the 1920s?

A winner will be drawn at random next Sunday. Good luck!

Weapons and Armies: The War in the Sky

By Delia DeLeest

On the 17th of December, 1903, Orville Wright flew an airplane 120 and the history of motorized flight began. Men had been yearning to fly for thousands of years and the Wright brothers had made it a fact. What's really amazing is that within the next ten years, flight took on a life of its own.

In its early years, flying was considered a sport for extreme risk-takers and was considered unethical to use for war. The shooting or dropping of bombs from the air was considered immoral and illegal. This soon changed.

The French were the first to develop an air force, but it was only used for spying and reconnaissance and the planes were not equipped with weapons of any sort. There have been stories of enemy recon planes passing each other and merely exchanging grins and waves. This soon escalated into rivals tossing bricks, grenades and rope (in an attempt to tangle it in the propeller) at each other Though still not equipped with on board weapons, the first dogfight took place between a German and a British plane, the pilots shooting at each other using conventional pistols. The first downed plane as the result of a dogfight was when a Russian pilot rammed another plane, the Russian died in the attack.

Germany quickly came out on top in the air wars. Despite having a much smaller air force, they frequently defeated their enemies, sometimes being outnumbered as much as eight to one. They came up with many innovations, such as painting their crafts with luminescent paint to protect against collisions during night bombing raids and developing a timer on their front-mounted machine guns to prevent the bullets from hitting the propeller when firing. They also had one of the most famous pilots in history on their roster, Manfred von Richthofen, better known as The Red Baron of Peanuts fame. He's credited with shooting down 80 Allied planes before being shot down himself. His abilities were so respected that, at his death, the enemy even held a memorial service for him.

From being considered immoral and unethical at the beginning of the war, these Knights of the Sky soon became revered and respected for their abilities, resourcefulness and bravery. In those days, it was simply brave to even fly in an airplane, since parachutes were not standard issue equipment for pilots during World War One, when your plane went down, you had no choice, you went with it.

After the war, pilots were at loose ends. They'd experienced the thrill and freedom of the air and had a hard time going back to the staid stability of civilian life. With commercial air travel only just emerging, there were few jobs for pilots in peacetime 1920s. Unwilling to give up life in the sky, many pilots bought surplus warplanes rather cheaply and began life as barnstormers, an exciting topic for a future post.

Weapons and Armies: ANZACs

By Anne Whitfield

In 1914, when England declared war, the people in its colonies followed the call to arms, despite being miles of oceans away. England was the mother country and they'd defend it to the death. And die they did, in the thousands.

The young men and women of Australia and New Zealand proudly served their countries in numerous wars, collectively the were known as the ANZACs.

The ANZAC Acronym

ANZAC is the acronym formed from the initial letters of the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps, the formation into which Australian and New Zealand soldiers were grouped in Egypt prior to the landing at Gallipoli in April 1915. First written as A. & N. Z. Army Corps, it soon became A. N. Z. A. C. and the new word was so obvious that the full stops were omitted. The word was initially used to refer to the cove where the Australians and New Zealanders landed and soon after, to the men themselves. An ANZAC was a man who was at the Landing and who fought at Gallipoli, but later it came to mean any Australian or New Zealand soldier of the First World War. An ANZAC who served at Gallipoli was given an A badge which was attached to his colour patch.

In later years the term ANZAC was applied to any man or women serving in any of the wars.

The Anzacs lost 8,000 men in Gallipoli and a further 18,000 were wounded. The Anzacs went on to serve with distinction in Palestine and on the western front in France. The Anzacs were in many of the major battles and were commended for their bravery and courage. Many times the Anzacs were the first soldiers sent into a battle or an occupied area by their British superior officers. They were thought to be expendable, but they soon showed the world how the men from the harsh pioneering countries had the endurance and spirit to overcome such a fearsome enemy.

Australia had a population of five million--330,000 served in the war, and 59,000 were killed. New Zealand with a population of one million lost 18,000 men out of 110,000 and had 55,000 wounded. These New Zealand figures (62%) represent the highest percentage of all units from the Anglo-Saxon world.

The picture above right is the Casualty clearing station, Menin Road, Belgium.

Every year Australians and New Zealand celebrate the mateship, the bond of our two countries that were united against a common enemy. April 25th is ANZAC Day, (the day the men landed at Gallipoli). It's a day when a whole nation comes together to remember those who fought for our freedom and those who made the greatest sacrifice of their lives.

Lest We Forget

For more information read on the ANZACS and their contribution to the fighting forces of world wars visit the following websites.
ANZAC France
Australian War Memorial
ANZAC Day

Early Plastic Surgery Alternatives

A repost from Delia Deleest

While reading my February, 2007 edition of Smithsonian magazine (yeah, I'm a leeetle behind on my magazine reading) I read the most fascinating article by Caroline Alexander called "Faces of War." I felt I just had to share it with someone, and you are my intended victims. Since I have a completed manuscript out making the rounds featuring a hero facially disfigured from a bomb explosion during WWI, this story was especially interesting to me.

The article tells of Anna Coleman Ladd and Francis Derwent Wood, artists who lent their talents to those whose faces were destroyed beyond the abilities of plastic surgeons of the World War I era.

Once the victim's face was completely healed, a plaster cast was made of their face--this in itself was a claustrophobic, uncomfortable procedure. From the cast, a clay 'squeeze'--or statue-like rendition of the face--was made. Then, using the squeeze, along with a pre-injury portrait of the patient, a mask was made.

Made of galvanized copper 1/32 of an inch thick (about the thickness of a playing card), the mask was fashioned. The mask weighed between 4 and 9 ounces, would cover all or part of the face and generally held to the wearers head with a pair of eyeglasses-like spectacles. The metal was then painted to match the wearers skin tone including adding a blueish cast to the cheeks to resemble shaven cheeks--a very difficult task as skin tone varies depending on the light. Then eyebrows, lashes and moustaches were added.

Of course, these masks were exactly that--masks. Their expression didn't change or add animation to the wearers face. Their sole purpose was to give the wearer confidence to expose himself to the world. If the wearer was only give a brief glance, the mask made him look perfectly normal.

As primitive as these devices seem to us, the masks changed the wearer's lives, they gave them confidence and became part of their daily lives. The masks were intended for use for only a few years before normal wear and tear took their toll, but by 1920, the studios were closed. That didn't stop the men from continuing to wear them, battered and beat up as they may be. Few if any of these masks are around today, mainly due to the fact that the men were buried in them. They were as much a part of their lives as a pair of eyeglasses or a set of dentures.

Smithsonian has several before and after pictures in the article. If you have access to a magazine, I suggest you check them out, they're incredible.

UPDATE: Here's a video of the creative process behind the masks, and here's a link to the original article with photo gallery.

When plastic surgery wasn't enough

While reading my February, 2007 edition of Smithsonian magazine (yeah, I'm a leeetle behind on my magazine reading) I read the most fascinating article by Caroline Alexander called "Faces of War." I felt I just had to share it with someone, and you are my intended victims. Since I have a completed manuscript out making the rounds featuring a hero facially disfigured from a bomb explosion during WWI, this story was especially interesting to me.

The article tells of Anna Coleman Ladd and Francis Derwent Wood, artists who lent their talents to those whose faces were destroyed beyond the abilities of plastic surgeons of the World War I era.

Once the victim's face was completely healed, a plaster cast was made of their face -- this in itself was a claustrophobic, uncomfortable procedure. From the cast, a clay 'squeeze' -- or statue-like redition of the face -- was made. Then, using the squeeze, along with a pre-injury portrait of the patient, a mask was made.

Made of galvanized copper 1/32 of an inch thick (about the thickness of a playing card), the mask was fashioned. The mask weighed between 4 and 9 ounces, would cover all or part of the face and generally held to the wearers head with a pair of eyeglasses-like spectacles. The metal was then painted to match the wearers skin tone including adding a blueish cast to the cheeks to resemble shaven cheeks-a very difficult task as skin tone varies depending on the light. Then eyebrows, lashes and moustaches were added.

Of course, these masks were exactly that -- masks. Their expression didn't change or add animation to the wearers face. Their sole purpose was to give the wearer confidence to expose himself to the world. If the wearer was only give a brief glance, the mask made him look perfectly normal.

As primative as these devices seem to us, the masks changed the wearer's lives, they gave them confidence and became part of their daily lives. The masks were intended for use for only a few years before normal wear and tear took their toll, but by 1920, the studios were closed. That didn't stop the men from continuing to wear them, battered and beat up as they may be. Few if any of these masks are around today, mainly due to the fact that the men were buried in them. They were as much a part of their lifes as a pair of eyeglasses or a set of dentures.

Smithsonian has several before and after pictures in the article. If you have access to a magazine, I suggest you check them out, they're incredible.

World War II

I have to admit I have a soft spot for the two world war periods, especially from the English perspective. My parents were children in WWII and have told me of their memories of bombing raids and air raid shelters, wearing gas mask around their necks as they went to school.

I have an extra interest in WWII now because I've been offered a contract from Wild Rose Press for a WWII novel set in England 1944.

The Great War (1914-1918) was such a changing time. It was the first time women really came into their own and showed the male population that they could do more than simply housekeep and mother.

Although the times were hard and full of despair, such dramatic periods of peoples lives often give the best stories. What better way to create a happy ever after? The hero has been through hell in the trenches and the heroine has been left at home wondering, hoping, praying for news of her lover? There is no need to fight each other when there are larger issues to contend with!

WWII (1930- 1945) brought changes to the world again. Women, especially English women had a guaranteed place in this war: they served as nurses, ambulance drivers, in the munitions factories and on the land. They kept the country running, but they also became truly independent of people in their own right. Their dress styles changes as did their attitudes. The Americans came to England and showed English girls another type of man -- brash, cheeky, fun-loving and often much more wealthier. The GIs introduced new faster dances, which actually lifted the woman in the air and whoops, showed off her underwear!

All periods of history can be made interesting for a story, and wars give a double spin on things - the man away fighting, the woman home waiting and working, keeping it all together for her lovers return.

How can anyone say this isn't an interesting time to write about?