#Flanders Fields Chapter Belgium

[rikwintein]

Ondelibereerbaar

Laatst zette een motoruitstap de piot aan het denken. Het is geen geheim. Als het even kan trekken Mijn Groote Liefde en de piot er op uit met de Milwaukee Vibrators. Soms rijden ze ergens heen om een doel te hebben: een lekkere lunch, een koffie met uitzicht op natuurpracht (in de breedste betekenis van het woord) of een zalige plek om een tentje op te zetten. Uiteindelijk is het onderweg zijn…

[newty]

A collection of over 40 writers and their work from World War 1 and the years that followed.

11/11. Happy Armistice Day!

This is by no means a guide so much as it is recommendations and selections from my reading list, but I hope it can interest others in some extraordinary or important lives. Enjoy!

POETRY

Richard Aldington (1892-1962)

British. 2nd Lieutenant, Royal Sussex Regiment.

Themes: Callousness, Apathy, Sound, Myth & History, Art

War and Love 1915-1918 (1919)

"Trench Idyll"

"In The Trenches"

"Apathy"

"Soliloquy I" & "Soliloquy II"

Exile and Other Poems (1923)

“Eumenides”

“At a Gate by the Way”

Edmund Blunden (1896-1974)

British. 2nd Lieutenant, Royal Sussex Regiment.

Field: Ypres, Somme, Passchendaele

Themes: Survivor's Guilt, Isolation, Nature, Post-War Reflection

The Waggoner (1920)

"The Estrangement"

The Shepherd and Other Poems of Peace and War (1922)

"11th R.S.R."

"Reunion in War"

"The Troubled Spirit"

"War Autobiography: Written in Illness"

"Third Ypres: A Reminiscence"  

Rupert Brooke (1887-1915)

British. Sub-lieutenant, British Mediterranean Expeditionary Force, but died of sepsis before reaching Gallipoli.

Themes: Colonialism, Memory & Death

1914 and Other Poems (1915)

"1914"

Robert Graves (1895-1985)

British. Captain, Royal Welch Fusiliers.

Field: Somme, but also in a POW and Garrison camp iirc.

Themes: Camaraderie, Grief, Flippancy/Humor, Personal Change

Faeries and Fusiliers (1919)

The Pier-Glass (1921)

"Lost Love"

Collected Poems 1955 (1955)

"Recalling war"

Frederic Manning (1882-1935)

Australian & British. Private, King's Shropshire Light Infantry. Lance Corporal, 7th Battalion. 2nd Lieutenant, Royal Irish Regiment.

Field: The Somme, Ancre

Themes: Collective identity, Numbness, Individuality, Ritual as a coping method, Myth

Eidola (1917)

"αυτάρκεια"

Wilfred Owen (1893-1918)

British. 2nd Lieutenant, Manchester Regiment.Also see: The Hydra (1917-1918), the Craiglockhart War Hospital magazine.

Field: Northern France

Themes: Inhumanity, Protest, Disgust & Pity

Poems (1921)

“Apologia Pro Poemate Meo”

“Mental Cases”

“Dulce et Decorum Est”

"S.I.W" (Self-Inflicted Wound)

“Wild With All Regrets”

Poems of Wilfred Owen (1931)

“The Unreturning”

The Complete Poems and Fragments (1984)

Isaac Rosenberg (1890-1918)

British (also Jewish!). Private, 12th Bantam Battalion of the Suffolk Regiment, then South Lancashire Regiment, then King's Own Royal Lancaster Regiment, then King's Own Royal Regiment.

Also see: Joseph Cohen Collection of Rosenberg documents and artifacts 

Field: Arras

Themes: Heroism, Loathing, Confusion

Poems (1922)

"Significance"

"The Immortals"

Delphi Complete Poetry, Plays, Letters and Prose of Isaac Rosenberg (2015)

Not free, but like the one for Wilfred Owen, I recommend these collections since they're super cheap (like $3) and mostly comprehensive even if there are some formatting errors.

Siegfried Sassoon (1886-1967)

British. 2nd Lieutenant, Royal Welch Fusiliers.

Also see: A Soldier's Declaration.

Field: The Somme, Arras

Themes: Activism, Self-Expression, Nature, Leadership, Camaraderie, Grief

The Old Huntsman and Other Poems (1918)

“The Kiss”

“The Last Meeting”

Counter-Attack and Other Poems (1918)

"Suicide in the Trenches" (sometimes typo'd, like in Collected Poems, as "Suicide in Trenches")

"Repression of War Experience"

"The Dream"

A Suppressed Poem (1918)  (alternative/full text)

War Poems (1919)

"Everyone Sang"  

Picture-Show (1920)

"Concert Party"

"Phantom" (removed from Collected Poems in 1961)  

"Aftermath"

Vigils (1936)

"War Experience"

"Revisitation"

The Collected Poems 1908-1956 (1961)

Contains text edits and revisions of previous work.

MEMOIR

Will R. Bird (1891-1984)

Canadian. 42nd Battalion, Royal Highlanders of Canada.

Field: France and Belgium

Also see: his bibliography. His work seems to have been popular, but is now exceedingly rare other than in some recent reprints.

And We Go On (1930)

Reissued as Ghosts Have Warm Hands (1968) which removes several anecdotes--and in particular, removes many instances of the ghost of his brother (who often appears to guide him after dying before Bird enlisted).

Thirteen Years After: The Story of the Old Front Revisited (1931)

Funded by Maclean's Magazine, Bird returned to France and wrote a series of reflections.

The Communication Trench: Anecdotes & Statistics from the Great War, 1914-1918 (1933)

A Soldier's Place: the War stories of Will R. Bird (2018)

Fifteen anecdotes from various war-time and post-war publications.

Edmund Blunden (1896-1974)

Undertone of War (1928)

Philip Gibbs (1877-1962)

British. Extraordinarily popular war journalist and later war correspondent.

Heavily censored in publications like the Daily Telegraph and Daily Chronicle.

Field: Western Front

The Soul of the War (1915)

From Bapaume to Passchendaele, 1917 (1918)

Reissued as The Struggle in Flanders on the Western Front, 1917 (1919)

The Way to Victory: Vol 1: The Menace and Vol 2: The Repulse (1919)

Wounded Souls (1920)

Now It Can Be Told (1920)

US title: The Realities of War

More That Must Be Told (1921)

Robert Graves (1895-1985)

Goodbye to All That (1929)

Censored (1929), Revised (1957), and I think Uncensored (2014)

Also a personal memoir--the first few chapters detail his childhood and discuss homosexuality.

Arnold Gyde (1894-1959)

British. Captain, 2nd Battalion South Staffordshire Regiment.

Field: Le Havre, Mons, Aisne

Contemptable (1916) as Casualty

Part of the Soldiers’ Tales of the Great War series

T. E. Lawrence (1888-1935)

British. Archeologist but mostly a military informant.

Field: Arab Revolt, Palestine 

Themes: Isolation, Brotherhood

Seven Pillars of Wisdom (1922)

Abridged "subscribers" edition subtitled with A Triumph (1926), Further abridged as Revolt in the Desert (1927), Unabridged as "The Oxford Text" (1997)

Also see: With Lawrence in Arabia (1924) by Lowell Thomas 

Thomas was a war correspondent for the US, and who filmed and photographed Palestine and Lawrence and created the media boom surrounding the two.

Also see: Lawrence and the Arabs (1927) by Robert Graves 

This book was initially panned for showing Lawrence as more of a flawed person than England's glorious war hero.

Edward C. Lukens

American. Lieutenant, 320th Infantry 80th Division.

Field: Meuse-Argonne

A Blue Ridge Memoir (1922) 

Includes an afterword titled “The Last Drive and Death of Major G. H. H. Emory” by E. McClure Rouzer

Wilfred Owen (1893-1918)

Journey from Obscurity: Wilfred Owen, 1893-1918 (1963-1965) by Harold Owen

Published in three volumes: Childhood, Youth, and War

E. M. Roberts

American. Lieutenant, RAF.

A Flying Fighter: An American Above the Lines in France (1918)

I’m not finding much on this book atm, but I remember finding some articles after I had read the book that mentioned much of it was embellished.

Siegfried Sassoon (1886-1967)

Siegfried's Journey, 1916-1920 (1945)

Discusses the range of his life on leave or otherwise away from the battlefield, along with his post-war travels and struggles. For his more military memoirs, see the Sherston Trilogy below.

Also see: Lady Ottoline's Album (1976)

included entirely bc there's a cute pics of him (pg 66-67,90-93) but also bc there's a lot of cool ppl in it (also Robert Graves 68, Edmund Blunden 69)

Diaries:

Scans of 1915-1922, 1924-1927, 1931-1932: Sassoon Journals @ Cambridge

Siegfried Sassoon Diaries 1915-1918 (1983)

Highlights: 27 May 1916. 13 July 1916. 23 April 1917. 17 April 1918.  27 April 1918. 9 May 1918. 19 December 1917.

Siegfried Sassoon Diaries 1920-1922 (1981)

Siegfried Sassoon Diaries 1923-1925 (1985)

FICTIONAL MEMOIR

Giving a third person narrator one's trauma or life allows the writer to view those events in a new light–and also partially absolve themselves from ownership of their actions and feelings. Thus, it was super popular to deflect the shame of trauma.

Richard Aldington (1892-1962)

Death of a Hero (1929)

Uncensored in two volumes (1930), in one volume (1965) and (1984)

Roads to Glory (1930)

Short stories

Hervey Allen (1889-1949)

American. Lieutenant, 111th Infantry Regiment of the 28th Division

Field: Marne, Aisne, Château-Theirrey

Toward the Flame (1926) (limited preview)

Henri Barbusse (1873-1935)

French. Western Front. Anti-war.

Under Fire: The Story of a Squad (1916)

One of the first WWI novels published. Formative work for Sassoon, but also popular with Owen iirc.

Larry Barretto (1890-1972)

American. Ambulance driver in France and Belgium.

A Conqueror Passes (1925)

The soldier protagonist swiftly falls into depression upon returning to civilian life, so he abandons everything to return to France. Where he hopes to return to the mental occupation of service, he finds instead that the world has moved on without him.

James Norman Hall (1887-1951)

American. Posing as a Canadian: Royal Fusiliers. After being discovered, Lafayette Escadrille and Lafayette Flying Corps, then Captain of US Army Air Service. German POW for several months.

Kitchener's Mob: The Adventures of an American in the British Army(1916)

Describes the Battle of Loos during his time as a machine gunner with the Royal Fusiliers.

High Adventure: A Narrative of Air Fighting in France (1918)

Also see: The Lafayette Flying Corps Vol 1 and Vol 2 (1920), a history written with fellow pilot Charles Bernard Nordhoff.

Also see: Falcons of France (1929), another memoir written with Charles Bernard Nordhoff.

John Dos Passos (1896-1970)

American. Ambulance Driver in France (Norton-Harjes Ambulance Corps) & Italy (American Red Cross)

One Man’s Initiation: 1917 (1920)

Reissued as First Encounter (1945)

Three Soldiers (1921)

Frederic Manning (1882-1935)

The Middle Parts of Fortune: Somme and Ancre, 1916 (1929) as Private 19022

Uncensored in two volumes

Censored edition is Her Privates We (1929), and Uncensored (2014)

Primarily depicts the mundane life of a private. A deserter crops up throughout the novel for commentary on the intersection of mental illness and perceived cowardice. The chapters on the trenches are extraordinary imo, and it's a great look at the unsensational life of billets and drill that most accounts leave out.

Charles Bernard Nordhoff (1887-1947)

American. Ambulance driver, then Lafayette Flying Corps, then Lieutenant of US Army Air Service

The Fledgling (1919)

Series of letters (and dairy entries?)

Also see: The Lafayette Flying Corps Vol 1 and Vol 2 (1920), a history written with fellow pilot James Norman Hall.

Also see: Falcons of France (1929), another memoir written with James Norman Hall.

Erich Maria Remarque (1898-1970)

German. 2nd Guards Reserve Division, then 15th Reserve Infantry Regiment, 2nd Company, Engineer Platoon Bethe.

Field: Hem-Lenglet  Torhout and Houthulst.

All Quiet on the Western Front (1929)

The Road Back (1931) (limited preview)

Siegfried Sassoon (1886-1967)

The Sherston trilogy follows his entire service, although purged of anything literary or concerning his family. He also changed the names of almost everyone in it. The third book does a great job confronting the trauma he swears he doesn't have up until the last couple pages.

Memoirs of a Fox-Hunting Man (1928) Memoirs of an Infantry Officer (1930) Sherston's Progress (1936)

FICTION

More on the Internet Archive

Hervey Allen (1889-1949)

It Was Like This: Two Stories of the Great War (1940)

Leonid Andreyev (1871-1919)

The Confessions of a Little Man During Great Days (1917

Russian. Account of a fictional banker in St. Petersburg struggling through war shortages and family strife. Anti-war.

E. F. Benson (1867-1940)

British. Archeologist, Greek Scholar, Worked in Cairo with T. E. Lawrence. also hes gay

Up and Down (1918)

An at-home drama which begins pre-war and descends into featuring the relationship of letters between home and the front.

Dodo Wonders-- (1921)

Sequel to Dodo: A Detail of the Day (1893) Dodo’s Daughter (1913) and Dodo the Second (1914) social dramas.

Will R. Bird (1891-1984)

Private Timothy Fergus Clancy (1930)

John Buchan (1875-1940)

Scottish. Popular novelist, Writer for the Propaganda Bureau, Director of Intelligence, and Lieutenant of Intelligence Corps

The Thirty-Nine Steps (1915)

First in the Richard Hannay series, suspense spy novels meant to sensationalize war intrigue and German barbarism.

Also see: Nelson's History of the War, a serial which began in 1915 to become a 24-volume account of censored and pro-Allies Great War history.

Wilfrid Heighington (1897-1945)

Canadian. Lieutenant, 4th Canadian Infantry Brigade

Field: The Somme, Vimy Ridge

The Cannon’s Mouth (1943)

Edward Edward Plunkett, Lord Dunsany (1878-1957)

Anglo-Irish. Captain, Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers. Also participated in the Easter Uprising. Traveled to Ploegsteert, St-Emilie, the Somme, and Bourlon Wood as work for the MI7 (b) creating propaganda.

Tales of War (1918) & Unhappy Far-Off Things (1919)

Short stories largely created as propaganda and published in various papers before being collected in book form.

Also see: Patches of Sunlight (1938), his autobiography.

Rebecca West (1892-1983)

The Return of the Soldier (1918)

A rather fanciful novel of a woman confronting her cousin soldier returning home with amnesia, having forgotten the past 15 years of his life from shell-shock.

LETTERS

T. E. Lawrence (1888-1935)

I'm more familiar with Lawrence's post-war relationship with mental illness, which seems to be rooted in his tendency for self-reproach. He consistently bemoans his difference from the others, and details his reliance on military companionship for connections.

Highlights: To Lionel Curtis, 19/3/23. To Robert Graves, 12/11/22. To Lionel Curtis, 14/4/23.

Also published in: Lawrence, T. E., and Garnet, David. The Letters of T. E. Lawrence. Doubleday, Doran & Company, 1939.

Wilfred Owen (1893-1918)

Owen defends himself at every opportunity to eliminate the possibility that his distress is from cowardice, so while his testimony is valuable for its real-time recording, it's more difficult to pick out such violent and clear instances of trauma compared to other writers.

Also see: Uncensoring Owen Project

Highlights: To Susan Owen, 16/1/17. To Susan Owen, 4/2/17. To Susan Owen, 18/3/17 (which describes The Sentry). To Susan Owen, 6 (or 8)/4/17. To Susan Owen, 1/5/17. To Mary Owen, 8/5/17. To Siegfried Sassoon, 5/11/17. To Susan Owen, 6/17. To Susan Owen, 31/12/17. To Susan Owen, 4 (or 5)/10/19. To Siegfried Sassoon, 10/10/18.

Siegfried Sassoon (1886-1967)

Siegfried Sassoon letters to Max Beerbohm : with a few answers (1986)

Vera Brittain (1893-1970)

& Roland Leighton, Edward Brittain, Geoffrey Thurlow, Victor Nicholson

Letters From A Lost Generation: First World War Letters of Vera Brittain and Four Friends (1998)

PLAYS

R. C. Sherriff (1896-1975)

British. East Surrey Regiment

Field: Vimy Ridge, Loose, Passchendaele

Journey's End (1929)

Also novelized (1930) with Vernon Bartlett

J. M. Barrie (1860-1937)

Scottish. Propagandist. Also see: famous author propagandists

Echoes of the War (1918)

Four humorously written yet hard-hitting plays concerning the war, particularly interpersonal relationships at home. More like satire than jingoism tbh.

MEDICAL ESSAYS

Shell-shock and Other Neuropsychiatric Problems Presented in 589 Case Histories (1919) by E. E. Southard (ableist af but these case studies are an extraordinary insight into the breadth of symptoms and their treatment. highly recommended.)

War Neuroses and Shell Shock (1919) by F.W. Mott

Hysterical Disorders of Warfare (1918) by Lewis Yealland

Army Report of The War Office Committee of Enquiry into Shell Shock (1922)

Shell Shock and Its Lessons (1918) by Sir Grafton Elliot Smith, Tom Hatherley Pear

Repression of War Experience (1917) by W.H.R. Rivers

Conflict and Dream (1924) by W.H.R Rivers

Instinct and the Unconscious (1924)  by W.H.R Rivers

MEDICAL ACCOUNTS

Harold Barclay (1872-1922)

American. Captain, American Expeditionary Forces. Roosevelt Hospital Unit, then 42nd Division.

Field: Château-Thierry, St.-Mihiel

A Doctor in France, 1917-1919 (1923)

His diary--also published after his death.

Vera Brittain (1893-1970)

Testament of Youth (1933) 

Also see: Vera Brittain and the First World War: The Story of Testament of Youth (2014) for its extra chapter on Edward Brittain and his oft-discussed death (spoiler: they confirmed he was gay).

Ellen La Motte (1873–1961)

The Backwash of War (1916)

American. A collection of fourteen stories from the hospitals of France.

Helen Zenna Smith/Evadne Price (1888-1985)

Not So Quiet: Stepdaughters of War (1930) (limited preview)

Written in the style of Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front using Winifred Constance Young, an actual ambulance driver as inspiration. 

Sequels: Women of the Aftermath/One Woman’s Freedom (1931), Shadow Women (1932), Luxury Ladies (1933), They Lived With Me (1934)

May Sinclair/Mary Amelia St. Clair (1863-1946)

British. WSPU and WWSL member/Suffragette. Founding supporter of the Medico-Psychological Clinic in London, Munro Ambulance Corps in Flanders for a few weeks.

A Journal of Impressions in Belgium (1915) 

OTHER ACCOUNTS

A. T. Fitzroy/Rose Allatini (1890-1980)

Despised and Rejected (1918)

Austrian-British. A novel following members of the CO and Pacifist movement. also v gay

Father Bernard Carey (1865-1932)

Leaves from the Diary of a Catholic Chaplain in the Great World War 

(1920)

Irish. A chaplain's memoir of Egypt and East Africa, and the religious and racial intolerance in the military.

Philip Gibbs (1877-1962)

Germans on the Somme (1917)

John Masefield (1878-1967)

British. Poet Laureate. Briefly a Red Cross orderly, then propogandist with the Department of Information.

Gallipoli (1915)

Account of the campaign's failure to counteract anti-German propaganda in the US.

The Old Front Line (1918)

Eyewitness account of the Somme. Revisited and further completed in Battle of the Somme (1919)

The War and the Future (1918)

Also see: John Masefield's Letters from the Front, 1915-1917 (1985)

Also see: His poem “August 1914″

William Le Roy Stidger (1885-1949)

American. YMCA Pastor working with the AEF.

Soldier Silhouettes on our Front (1918) & Star Dust From The Dugouts (1919)

Stories of Christian faith through portraits of various soldiers.

Stanley Washburn (1878-1950) 

American. Correspondent of the London Times in Russia.

Field Notes From the Russian Front (1915) The Russian Campaign: April to August 1915 (1916) Victory In Defeat - The Agony Of Warsaw And The Russian Retreat (1916) Field Notes From the Russian Front (1917)

BLOGS & PROJECTS

Siegfried Sassoon resources

Cambridge Sassoon Project Blog

T. E. Lawrence texts and resources

Life timelines for several poets, like Sassoon and Owen

War Poets Association

Oxford War Poetry Digital Archive

List of additional war poets

WWI fiction resource

WWI timeline and artifacts resource

Today in WWI with Literary and Historical contexts

List of WWI authors and dust jackets

Additional WWI writers

Great War Theatre

Essay on American pilots in other armies

[lucidpantone]

King Fic Preface

Historical context you will need to know before reading

Disclosure: For this to work Sander or Robbe will need to be English (sorry Belgians, I’ll need to borrow one and make him a York)

The year 1471 (The War Of The Roses)

- Edward IV (deposed King of England) flees to Flanders or better known as Burgundy (Modern day Belgium/Netherlands) Historically Accurate

- Edward IV never marries Elizabeth Woodville he instead allows the Earl of Warwick and Louis(Lucas) XI of France (see what I did there, ;0) to negotiate a betrothal on his behave to the Burgundian princess (Mary of Burgundy) to pacify the demands of Charles The Bold The Duke of Burgundy (Not Historically Accurate, People are Historically accurate) as he fears a french invasion on the horizon (Historically Accurate France does invade eventually)

Wtfock+Skam nl = Burgundian royal court (Historically Accurate that was regional Burgundy)

SkamFR = French Royal court

Yorkist court (Edward IV paternal court)= Most likely Skam Austin(ya know since british and USA history, makes sense) or TBC (to be created)

Skam Espana = Spanish Royal court (they didn’t do much in TWOTR but they married a ton of prince/princess off to the above courts). So cameos.

Things that will absolutely happen at the times they did in history:

Burgundy established via Charles the Bold will fall in 1477(not for exactly for the same reasons but the date stays)

Epilogue content = The  Battle of Bosworth Field on 22 August 1485 (Battle is happening, who’s on what side TBC)

Epilogue content =  The rise of the House of Tudor (1485)

*The fic will be composed of 6 chapters covering every year before the fall of Burgundy.The fic is a love story and that's the priority I will try to avoid getting to into the war weeds and I’ll stay as close to history as possible.*

[annesoftheisland]

"'Comes he slow or comes he fast It is but death who comes at last.'" quoted Walter. "It's not death I fear—I told you that long ago. One can pay too high a price for mere life, little sister. There's so much hideousness in this war—I've got to go and help wipe it out of the world. I'm going to fight for the beauty of life, Rilla-my-Rilla—that is my duty. There may be a higher duty, perhaps—but that is mine. I owe life and Canada that, and I've got to pay it. Rilla, tonight for the first time since Jem left I've got back my self-respect. I could write poetry," Walter laughed. "I've never been able to write a line since last August. Tonight I'm full of it. Little sister, be brave—you were so plucky when Jem went." "This—is—different," Rilla had to stop after every word to fight down a wild outburst of sobs. "I loved—Jem—of course—but—when—he went—away—we thought—the war—would soon—be over—and you are—everything to me, Walter." "You must be brave to help me, Rilla-my-Rilla. I'm exalted tonight—drunk with the excitement of victory over myself—but there will be other times when it won't be like this—I'll need your help then." "When—do—you—go?" She must know the worst at once. "Not for a week—then we go to Kingsport for training. I suppose we'll go overseas about the middle of July—we don't know." One week—only one week more with Walter! The eyes of youth did not see how she was to go on living. When they turned in at the Ingleside gate Walter stopped in the shadows of the old pines and drew Rilla close to him. "Rilla-my-Rilla, there were girls as sweet and pure as you in Belgium and Flanders. You—even you—know what their fate was. We must make it impossible for such things to happen again while the world lasts. You'll help me, won't you?" "I'll try, Walter," she said. "Oh, I will try." As she clung to him with her face pressed against his shoulder she knew that it had to be. She accepted the fact then and there. He must go—her beautiful Walter with his beautiful soul and dreams and ideals. And she had known all along that it would come sooner or later. She had seen it coming to her—coming—coming—as one sees the shadow of a cloud drawing near over a sunny field, swiftly and inescapably. Amid all her pain she was conscious of an odd feeling of relief in some hidden part of her soul, where a little dull, unacknowledged soreness had been lurking all winter. No one—no one could ever call Walter a slacker now. Rilla did not sleep that night. Perhaps no one at Ingleside did except Jims. The body grows slowly and steadily, but the soul grows by leaps and bounds. It may come to its full stature in an hour. From that night Rilla Blythe's soul was the soul of a woman in its capacity for suffering, for strength, for endurance. When the bitter dawn came she rose and went to her window. Below her was a big apple-tree, a great swelling cone of rosy blossom. Walter had planted it years ago when he was a little boy. Beyond Rainbow Valley there was a cloudy shore of morning with little ripples of sunrise breaking over it. The far, cold beauty of a lingering star shone above it. Why, in this world of springtime loveliness, must hearts break? Rilla felt arms go about her lovingly, protectingly. It was mother—pale, large-eyed mother. "Oh, mother, how can you bear it?" she cried wildly. "Rilla, dear, I've known for several days that Walter meant to go. I've had time to—to rebel and grow reconciled. We must give him up. There is a Call greater and more insistent than the call of our love—he has listened to it. We must not add to the bitterness of his sacrifice." "Our sacrifice is greater than his," cried Rilla passionately. "Our boys give only themselves. We give them." Before Mrs. Blythe could reply Susan stuck her head in at the door, never troubling over such frills of etiquette as knocking. Her eyes were suspiciously red but all she said was, "Will I bring up your breakfast, Mrs. Dr. dear." "No, no, Susan. We will all be down presently. Do you know—that Walter has joined up." "Yes, Mrs. Dr. dear. The doctor told me last night. I suppose the Almighty has His own reasons for allowing such things. We must submit and endeavour to look on the bright side. It may cure him of being a poet, at least"—Susan still persisted in thinking that poets and tramps were tarred with the same brush—"and that would be something. But thank God," she muttered in a lower tone, "that Shirley is not old enough to go." "Isn't that the same thing as thanking Him that some other woman's son has to go in Shirley's place?" asked the doctor, pausing on the threshold. "No, it is not, doctor dear," said Susan defiantly, as she picked up Jims, who was opening his big dark eyes and stretching up his dimpled paws. "Do not you put words in my mouth that I would never dream of uttering. I am a plain woman and cannot argue with you, but I do not thank God that anybody has to go. I only know that it seems they do have to go, unless we all want to be Kaiserised—for I can assure you that the Monroe doctrine, whatever it is, is nothing to tie to, with Woodrow Wilson behind it. The Huns, Dr. dear, will never be brought to book by notes. And now," concluded Susan, tucking Jims in the crook of her gaunt arms and marching downstairs, "having cried my cry and said my say I shall take a brace, and if I cannot look pleasant I will look as pleasant as I can."

Rilla of Ingleside - CHAPTER XIV - THE VALLEY OF DECISION

[ao3feed-klave]

by bluebacchus

When a butterfly flaps its wings, a hurricane is created on the other side of the world. When a bus driver gets distracted and hits a pothole, a briefcase is dropped, a man disappears in a flash of blue light, and a time machine picks up an unwitting passenger from the jungles of Vietnam.

Or, how Klaus and Dave find each other in a corner of a foreign field in Flanders, 1917. (WWI AU)

Part I: Klaus finds himself in the middle of a war zone, invents manscaping, and steals the last chicken in Belgium.

Words: 7261, Chapters: 1/1, Language: English

Fandoms: The Umbrella Academy (TV)

Rating: Mature

Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings

Categories: Multi

Characters: Dave (Umbrella Academy), Klaus Hargreeves, Number Five | The Boy (Umbrella Academy), Original Characters

Relationships: Dave/Klaus Hargreeves

Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - World War I, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Violence, Blood and Gore, Gay Rights, gangrene, Time Travel, Drug Use, animal death i suppose, Northern slang, 1910s slang, trench typical lice infestation, Falling In Love, Slow Burn, Mutual Pining

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Morning Fluff

  When he awoke with the sun blazing through the shudders of his barracks his first thought was to turn and hug to girl who brought him here. He wasn’t particularly suprised when she wasn’t there or that the only testament to her even being there was a small sticky-note that simply read “Get up Evan you can rest when you’re dead and you ARE still needed.” 

He chuckled at that. That phase in it’s dozens of variations had been said to him more dozens of times then he could count and it always served as a bucket of icy water to wake him up just enough to take a few more tentative steps forward. He rubbed his eyes and looked around finding that the movie had been paused just after he fell asleep. He shrugged, couldn’t blame her no point staying when he was sound asleep. 

He stood still in his BDU from the night before and checked his watch 05:22. He smiled there was still enough time for a run and read a few chapters from a ancient Terran history of a battle in a forgotten nation known as Belgium around a lost city called Ypres. He opened the door out the front door. He took a deep breath. It was over 45C today and the air itself burned it’s way down his throat eventually filling his lungs with slight discomfort. He loved it though it had a way of actually making him even more alert almost as though the sun itself burned the anxiety from his system. Running never was particularly hard for him at least not since the crash. The augments took almost all the work out of it save for the exceptionally few natural muscle in him he could continue until there was his brain was fried from the heat. He stopped at a bombed out small suburban house about a mile from base entering through the long smashed open door and sat on the back padio on a miraculously still intact rocking chair. He ripped off his boots and put them on a small wooden table to his left. He took out his canteen nearly finishing half of it in one gulp then put it on the table too. Lastly he pulled out his book and flipped it to where he left off then opened his sketch book. 

The last thing he drew was a group of men in dark brown uniforms and plate like helmets with a a cloth rapped around their faces exposing only their bloodshot eyes and a thin trail of blood leaking from their ears. They sat around together playing cards, laughing and teasing and joking together dispite the extraordinary pain they had to be in. Their rifles were piled by their feet soaked much like their owners in mud, slime, grease and blood. He could almost hear them singing “Pac up your troubles in your ol’ kit bag and smile!” He grinned with them and immediately the last of his mistakes, insecurities and heartache melted into Flanders Field. 

He sat back in his chair and started humming along with their song so many thousands of years old “ Mademoiselle from Armentieres” and laughed at how strange he had to look but he really didn’t care. After all if they could keep their  mental functions in such circumstances surely he could survive the regimental power struggle. Surely he could wait for suply to sort it self out. He could wait for the aching to end. He would wait patiently. What else could he do? He spent one last thought of the Scion who brought him home then buried it in that hole in his psychy he had put so much trouble building, picked up a pencil and started drawing a defeated army dusty and worn with hollow eyes escorting civilians to safety across a river he heard once called the Elbe and let his mind drift through time straight to them.

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Luis

Laatst mediteerde de piot over sociale contacten, clubactiviteiten en de combinatie van beiden. Het is geen geheim. Mijn Groote Liefde en de piot zijn niet direct pittige voorbeelden van een druk en intens sociaal leven. Evenwel is de Via Prosperità alles behalve een kluizenaarsoord. Soms is het zinvoller en verstandiger afstand te houden om de loop der dingen in een helderder perspectief te…

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Leve Google

Laatst was Mijn Groote Liefde een beetje de weg kwijt. Die middag sturen Mijn Groote Liefde en haar piot onder een verzengende zomerzon hun Milwaukee Vibrators naar HD West-Flanders voor een groot onderhoud op afspraak. Dergelijke beurt duurt gemiddeld een uur, bevestigt een van de kundige specialists, er aan toevoegend dat wachten een redelijke mogelijkheid is. Voor Mijn Groote Liefde is dat…

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Stomme stoot

Laatst was de piot (terecht) het middelpunt van echtelijke spot. Volgens de grondwet van de Via Prosperità heeft de piot maandelijks recht op één stomme stoot. Dat quotum haalt hij meestal probleemloos. Ook deze maand. Naar jaarlijkse gewoonte neemt Mijn Groote Liefde haar zomervakantie net voor de grote schoolreces losbarst. In dit Corona-jaar houdt zij de agenda vrij sober, mede door de…

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La Parisienne (bis)

Laatst peilde Mijn Groote Liefde met uitgestreken gezicht naar het angstniveau bij de piot.

Die vrijdagavond tekent het bataljon present op geslaagde maneuvers in Hill60. Zoals het protocol het voorschrijft neemt de piot op de heenweg het stuurwiel ter hand met het oog op een rustige en veilige benadering van het einddoel. Op de retour jaagt Mijn Groote Liefde de familiewagen huiswaarts. Een en…

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Puntloos

Laatst gooide een wrede uithaal op Social Media de piot in een diep tranendal. Van het lachen…

Het zit sommige mensen gewoonweg niet mee. Een vage kennis spuwt in één grote geut een emmer ergernis over het Smoelenboek en verkettert Jan en Allemanomwille van schuldig verzuim (zo laat de breed uitsmeerde aanklacht zich vertalen). Heel intensief speurwerk onthult dat hij zélf schuld heeft aan alle…