by Lecia Cornwall

At the moment, novels set during the Second World War (1939-1945) are hugely popular. Many books use dual timelines that include events from the war-torn past and secrets left behind that must be uncovered by a modern character in the novel, offering two stories in one.

People often ask why I chose to write about the First World War (1914-1918), a far less familiar setting for many readers. World War I was the jerky black-and-white war, our great-grandparents’ war, the ugly war fought in the mud-filled trenches of France and Belgium in a combination of modern, mechanized weaponry, and older hand-to-hand fighting techniques. It was a war of terrible wounds, endless stalemates, mud, rats, lice, horror, and misery.  And those are just the first things that spring to mind when the First World War is mentioned. So why would anyone want to create a story set amid all that? How could anyone make all that worth reading about?

For me, I grew up learning that World War I was Canada’s war. Robert Greenwell, my grandfather, was an Englishman who arrived in Canada as a boy, and when war was declared, he was eager to do his bit for King and Empire. He served as a gunner, and his older brother Matthew joined the infantry. They were both at the battle of Vimy Ridge in 1917. Robert was behind the lines with the artillery, and Matthew was at the front, where he was killed in the earliest hours of fighting.

Robert died at the age of 96, and was buried in his Legion uniform, proud of his service until the end. When I was fifteen, he made me promise to go to France and find Matthew’s war grave near Vimy Ridge, which I did, with my own children in 2009 (my daughter was also fifteen that summer). Being immersed in the places where the war was fought, standing on the steps of the magnificent Vimy monument, and most importantly, finding my great-uncle’s grave, our soldier, an ancestor with a face and a name we knew, surrounded by thousands of others remembered only by their grave markers, was a striking moment. I knew then that I wanted to write a book about my grandfather’s war.

America’s experience of the first World War is different from that of Britain and Canada, where the First World War began in 1914. In Canada, immigrants with British roots signed up enthusiastically to answer the call from their mother country to join the fight for King and Empire. The United States resisted a fight that wasn’t their own, and didn’t enter the war until 1917, when German U-boats began targeting American merchant ships. American troops arrived in Europe in force in early 1918, the last year of the war, bringing fresh and much-needed manpower and materials to the exhausted armies that had been fighting for four years. For the Americans, active participation in the First World War was of a much shorter duration.

The precise causes of the First World War are murky to most people. By contrast, World War II offered a defined menace in the Nazis, a solid, understandable reason to fight, a battle of good versus evil. Thanks to front-line reporting, and Hollywood, war propaganda reached into every corner of popular culture and created a strong home front awareness of the events of the war, which was far more extensive than was the case in World War I. We know the names of the heroes and villains of the Second World War far more readily than we know those of the first war.

Women played wider roles in World War II—they served as reporters, nurses, doctors, mechanics, pilots, worked in factories, and were among the most resourceful and courageous resistance fighters. While women did most of those things in World War I as well, far less is said about them. Many World War II stories are about the diverse and courageous roles of women.

The Second World War, while no less brutal (in fact the death toll in World War II, including civilians, was far, far, higher), was far more technologically advanced. Aircraft had played an increasingly important role in the World War I, and by the end of that conflict, it was recognized that future wars would largely be decided by attacks deployed from high above the battlefields. Aircraft offered a new way of fighting, certainly less hand-to-hand, yet even more deadly than trench warfare.

For me, there are many interesting aspects of World War I, in addition to my family history. I have a fascination for war medicine in every time period from the Napoleonic Wars to Viet Nam. I also wanted to tell my story from a female point of view, so I began to research nurses. That changed when  discovered that while women were allowed to serve in France as nurses, ambulance drivers, and volunteers, female doctors were not permitted to work at military posts on the Western Front by the British. There was the germ of my story, the hook. My protagonist became a female doctor who breaks the mould, goes to France, and experiences the war from the front lines. Yes, there’s mud and blood and misery, but there’s also love, and hope, and courage.  

Researching the medical services of World War I was fascinating. Mechanized warfare led to many advancements. There were no antibiotics available in World War I. Fighting on ground that had once been farmer’s fields, the manure used to fertilize those fields left deadly bacteria in the soil which invaded wounds and cause gas gangrene. Doctors had to find new ways to deal with the infections. They pioneered new antiseptics and anesthetics, improved surgical techniques, and developed plastic surgery methods to restore damaged faces. Nurses found better ways to treat shock. The war led to a new understanding of shell shock. Nobel-winning scientist Marie Curie designed mobile X-ray trucks that saved time, limbs, and lives. Stretcher bearers went from being mere porters to the first army medics, with advanced first aid training that ensured more casualties survived.

Both wars changed the entire world. One led directly to the other, and civilization failed to learn the lessons of the first war. Both eras have their heroes and villains and shining examples of innovation, courage, and love. It’s those stories that fascinate me. In any war, heroes are needed, and they reveal themselves in fascinating ways. Storytellers are lucky enough to be able to bring those stories and those ordinary and extraordinary people to life for our readers.

Originally from Ontario, Lecia Cornwall now calls the foothills of Canada’s Rocky Mountains her home. She is the author of fifteen novels. The Woman at the Front (October 2021) is her first historical fiction title. She writes full time, loves gardening (though many plants come to her house just to die), knit (and purl!), adopt stray creatures (usually cats), and create magical worlds from cardboard, paint, and glue.