Today Anzac Day commemorates all Australians and New Zealanders “who served and died in all wars, conflicts, and peacekeeping operations,” and while Armistice Day (November 11th) is still recognized as a Commonwealth memorial day, ANZAC day holds a special meaning for these nations.

It’s hard to imagine life in the trenches, just waiting for the whistle that commanded you to hoist up over the top, I can’t even fathom what would be going through my mind or how I would be able to keep myself even remotely sane knowing that moment could come any day or any hour.  Soldiers also had very little they could do to distract themselves while waiting for this to happen other than sit, try and sleep or read; and apparently that is what many of them did.

As for what they read, Perhaps the safest answer is anything they could get their hands on. Most soldiers traveled light to the front and then craved books and magazines once they were embroiled in the stalemate. They would read anything that could take their thoughts off the mud, the rats, the shelling, the smell, the snipers and the prospect of going over the top and charging machine gun emplacements.

If you are interested, here is a list of literature that may have been popular on both sides of no-mans land.

As an aside, I apologize i f this post may seem a little ill-timed to Australians and New Zealanders, I happen to live on the exact wrong side of the international date line when it comes to timely recognizing your national events, so while the majority of you are about to wake up on the morning of April 26 I am most assuredly living the morning of the 25th, and absolutely thinking of you all at this time.

“In the never-ending trench warfare in North-East France, the German infantryman was sleeping as usual with his Bible underneath his head. Without warning, a direct hit destroyed his dug-out almost completely, wounding and killing many of his comrades. Geiler was not harmed and managed to get out of the rubble. It was only later when he retrieved his Bible he discovered to his astonishment that the holy book had saved him. His son, Professor Gottfried Geiler, from Leipzig, said: “A 4cm large piece of shrapnel tore the Bible under his head. It broke through, but not completely, so my father was unharmed and still alive. “It’s true to say that the Bible, which has been kept ever since as a precious memento in the family, really was his salvation.” Geiler’s grandson Markus Geiler said it had also been treated as a ‘family anti-war memorial’. ‘I can remember my father leading me to his bookcase, opening it and taking out the Bible which was wrapped in thick paper,” he recalled. He said: ‘Look, this is what saved your grandfather’s life.’ It was always something very special when this book was unpacked.’”

They congregated outside the New York Public Library in 1918, urging citizens to do their part for the war effort and donate books to the cause, to be shipped to the enlisted Americans on the front.

A woman atop a mountain of books outside the New York Public Library

There is a book about the war-time struggle for books and reading materials, called Books in the War: The Romance of Library War Service by Theodore W. Koch. Koch was the Assistant Librarian at the University of Michigan’s Bentley Historical Library from 1904 to 1915, when he took a trip to England to discuss reading restrictions from enemy countries with the censors there. Upon his return he made a report of his findings to the Librarian of Congress, including his observations of how British citizens banded together to send books to their troops at war. Thus the seed of the idea and necessity was planted, and the Americans emulated the British.

Koch’s Book

The effort spread to print as well, and resulted in many leaflets, banners and poster propaganda urging civilians to participate.

Another poster highlighting the troops’ need for books – this one from WWII

True. But while Churchill had two stints as prime minister and is most famous for his wartime leadership, many people don’t realize that his real passion was writing. That should come as no surprise, really; his oft-quoted, inspiring and impassioned speeches were a clear and obvious indication of his talent for and love of the English language. He was a genius with words.

His books also paid his rather substantial bills. Discover more about a remarkable writing career that began in 1898.

Winston Churchill, author.

One such young man was Ernest Hemingway, who fought in World War I. This letter to his family about his experiences in the war was written in 1918, just three months after Hemingway was seriously wounded by shrapnel while driving an ambulance in Italy. He was 19 years old and still stationed overseas. It’s hard to imagine many 19 year olds with this kind of self-awareness, maturity and acceptance about the world around them.

18 October 1918

Dear Folks:

Your letter of September 24 with the pictures came today, and, family, I did admire to hear from you. And the pictures were awfully good. I guess everybody in Italy knows that I have a kid brother. If you only realized how much we appreciate pictures, pop, you would send ‘em often. Of yourselves and the kids and the place and the bay—they are the greatest cheer producers of all, and everybody likes to see everybody else’s pictures.

You, dad, spoke about coming home. I wouldn’t come home till the war was ended if I could make fifteen thousand a year in the States—nix. Here is the place. All of us Red Cross men here were ordered not to register. It would be foolish for us to come home because the Red Cross is a necessary organization and they would just have to get more men from the States to keep it going. Besides we never came over here until we were all disqualified for military service, you know. It would be criminal for me to come back to the States now. I was disqualified before I left the States because of my eye. I now have a bum leg and foot and there isn’t any army in the world that would take me. But I can be of service over here and I will stay here just as long as I can hobble and there is a war to hobble to. And the ambulance is no slacker’s job. We lost one man, killed, and one wounded in the last two weeks. And when you are holding down a front line canteen job, you know you have just the same chances as the other men in the trenches and so my conscience doesn’t bother me about staying.

I would like to come home and see you all, of course. But I can’t until after the war is finished. And that isn’t going to be such an awful length of time. There is nothing for you to worry about, because it has been fairly conclusively proved that I can’t be bumped off. And wounds don’t matter. I wouldn’t mind being wounded again so much because I know just what it is like. And you can only suffer so much, you know, and it does give you an awfully satisfactory feeling to be wounded. It’s getting beaten up in a good cause. There are no heroes in this war. We all offer our bodies and only a few are chosen, but it shouldn’t reflect any special credit on those that are chosen. They are just the lucky ones. I am very proud and happy that mine was chosen, but it shouldn’t give me any extra credit. Think of all the thousands of other boys that offered. All the heroes are dead. And the real heroes are the parents. Dying is a very simple thing. I’ve looked at death and really I know. If I should have died it would have been very easy for me. Quite the easiest thing I ever did. But the people at home do not realize that. They suffer a thousand times more. When a mother brings a son into the world she must know that some day the son will die, and the mother of a man that has died for his country should be the proudest woman in the world, and the happiest. And how much better to die in all the happy period of undisillusioned youth, to go out in a blaze of light, than to have your body worn out and old and illusions shattered.

So, dear old family, don’t ever worry about me! It isn’t bad to be wounded: I know, because I’ve experienced it. And if I die, I’m lucky.

Does all that sound like the crazy, wild kid you sent out to learn about the world a year ago? It is a great old world, though, and I’ve always had a good time and the odds are all in favor of coming back to the old place. But I thought I’d tell you how I felt about it. Now I’ll write you a nice, cheery, bunky letter in about a week, so don’t get low over this one. I love you all.

Ernie.

via Letters of Note.