Lads be honest would you let her heal your trench foot yes or no

Singer Sargent inspired

Happy World Book Day! 📚 In 1917 as the country entered #WWI, the Executive Board of the American Library Association created a Committee on Mobilization and War Service Plans with the mission to provide books and periodicals to military personnel at home and abroad.

Destruction caused by the explosion of a British ammunition dump at Wardrecques, 19 May 1918.

TIL AFTER THE US JOINED WWI THERE WAS A TREND TO RENAME SAUERKRAUT LIBERTY CABBAGE GUYS THE FREEDOM FRIES ARE NOT THE ORIGINAL THIS SHOULDN'T BE FUNNY WHY IS IT FUNNY.

Absolutely magnificent creature.

(source: Sears catalog, Fall/Winter 1918.)

French and British soldiers sharing a light at Étaples, c 1915.

The Grim Reaper doesn't come for the dead. That's a myth. He doesn't wear a robe either. Nor does he carry a scythe.

The Grim Reaper comes for the living. He wears the uniform of a private, ill fitting on a young man who's barely past boyhood.

The Grim Reaper comes for mothers. And when he comes every mother on the street steps outside to watch him go, dreading that it's her door where he's gonna stop.

The Grim Reaper is trembling and shy. It never gets easier. All those eyes on him.

The Grim Reaper doesn't carry a scythe. He carries a mailbag. And in it are a hundred letters. Each stamped with the Royal Army Seal.

The mother cries. She refuses the letter. But the Grim Reaper will not be denied. He is not the instrument of death. Only its herald.

The Grim Reaper has no time to stay. There're so many letters yet to deliver today.

The year is 1915, and the Grim Reaper knows that tomorrow will be a busy day as well.

Little girl and patient friend. Taken in France during the reconstruction period after the devastation of WWI - ca. 1917 - 1924. Source.

“The evolution of the fighting man” between 1914 and 1918.

Artefact No. 1 — Musical figurine, 1916

Found in the attic of a house belonging to an elderly woman long since passed. The figurine looks to be custom made, possibly meant to resemble the recipient’s son depicted in a small photograph tucked away in the base. However, its maker is unknown as well as why it was in the woman’s possession. It is thought to be a memento commissioned to remember her son Pte. T. J. Belrose when he went overseas in 1916. The inscription on the bottom reads, “My heart is always with you”. Pte. Belrose died on the 12th of April 1918 at 22 years old. The young couple who moved into the house noticed a strange melody coming from the attic at night and soon discovered the musical memento thankfully intact. Though the figurine no longer spins, it continues to mysteriously play music on its own without winding the key, most notably at 12:04 just after midnight.

I'm haunted by the beautiful potential in an Edwardian-era Persuasion.

A setting just after WWI, another time of major social upheaval--blurring class barriers, new ideas about gender roles, further crumbling of the aristocracy

Sir Walter blindly clings to the old order, barely thinking about the war except to lament the impossibility of getting good servants these days

Elizabeth Elliot styles herself as a bit of a women's rights activist, claiming this is the reason she remains unmarried

Anne would have served as a nurse if her father had allowed it, but of course he couldn't permit an Elliot of the Elliots to undertake such ugly work, so she stayed at home quietly undertaking the usual home-front charitable work

This war deepens the story's melancholy. There's not the same sense of the men returning home as conquering heroes. The world is changing, but is it worth what we've lost? Can we have hope for the future when all our optimistic dreams led to such slaughter?

The best way to retain some of Wentworth's glamour is to make him a flyboy. However, given their short life expectancies, I'm not sure how realistic it is to have him and several buddies survive the war.

A "band of brothers" in the trenches is also a decent analogue for their relationship

Harville's injury meant he was invalided home fairly early. Benwick's probably a wartime poet suffering from shell shock that only got worse after his fiance died in the influenza epidemic.

Louisa and Henrietta are of a slightly younger generation that hasn't been quite as scarred by the war. Their relative innocence makes them refreshing to a war-weary returning soldier

It's possible Wentworth is so shaken by Louisa's accident (and thus needs Anne to take charge) because it sparks some kind of PTSD flashback. (Though that may not be the best direction to take the character).

There's just so much potential to explore the layers--old wounds and new possibilities, finding ways to heal and grow and rebuild after pain and loss

*wakes up at 2am in a cold sweat* A7V toaster

context:

Lieutenant J. B. McDowell, British official cameraman, filming the town of Amiens with the view of the Cathedral, 7 April 1918.