Table of Contents

BEYOND THEIR LIMITS OF LONGING CONTEMPORARY WRITERS & VETERANS ON THE LINGERING STORIES OF WWI

foreword

By Monique Brouillet Seefried, PhD, a knight in the French Order of the Academic Palms, in the Order of Merit, and in the Order of the Legion of Honor

“At a time when the world is suffering through a pandemic never seen since the Great Influenza of 1918, and when unending military conflicts devastate entire regions of the Middle East and Africa, while millions of refugees are trying to escape war zones or poverty, the essays and creative pieces published in this collection shed light not only on specific events such as the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan or the Covid-19 crisis, but also on experiences and emotions pertaining to all aspects of the human condition. Animals and plants are not forgotten here and the devastating effects of warfare even they endured call upon us urgently to take care of our planet’s future to reduce the negative impacts our human actions have on its well-being.”

introduction

By Jennifer Orth-Veillon, PhD, editor

Part 1 WWI and Veteran Voices of Today

Draws lines connecting experiences as veterans today to the writerly lives and minds of American soldiers from WWI.

“Sunlight in the Tall Grass” and “Sleeping in the Trenches”: Composing Poetry and Music for the WWI Centennial 

—BRIAN TURNER, veteran

Interview with Robert Olen Butler: WWI and the Christopher Marlowe Cobb Thriller Series 

—ROBERT OLEN BUTLER, veteran, Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, 1993

—JENNIFER A. ORTH-VEILLON, PhD 

Visions of War and Peace: WWI Literature and Authority 

—PHIL KLAY, veteran, National Book Award for Fiction, 2014

“Dulce et Decorum Est”: Discovering WWI Poetry in an Iraqi Foxhole  

—SETH BRADY TUCKER, PhD, veteran 

They Shall Not Grow Old…and Neither Have We 

—TERESA FAZIO, veteran 

Ernst Jünger: The Modern War Story  

—ELLIOT ACKERMAN, veteran, finalist for National Book Award in Fiction, 2017 

Echoes of Sassoon: Brian Castner Interviews Matti Friedman  

—BRIAN CASTNER, veteran 

—MATTI FRIEDMAN, veteran

British WWI Cemetery Uncovered by U.S. Marines During Iraq War  

—BENJAMIN BUSCH, veteran 

“Today is Better than Tomorrow”: A British Cemetery Revisited Ten Years After Serving in the Iraq War  

—BENJAMIN BUSCH, veteran 

Accidental Tourism and War Memorials  

—ERIC CHANDLER, veteran 

F. Scott Fitzgerald and WWI: The “Crack Up” Essays 

—COLIN HALLORAN, veteran 

History Between Humor and Tragedy: Musings on Robert  Graves’ Memoir, Goodbye to All That 

—DAVID JAMES, veteran 

Of the Dreadnoughts 

—JEFFERY HESS, veteran 

A Movie That Made Me: A Farewell to Arms  

—JENNY PACANOWSKI, veteran 

A Story of Regeneration: Ernest Hemingway’s “Big Two Hearted River”  

—BRANDON CARO, veteran 

What the Mountains Hold: A Writer’s Trek Through the Dolomites of Mark Helprin’s WWI Italy 

—SHANNON HUFFMAN POLSON, veteran 

part 2 Past and Present: Bridging the WWI Military-Civilian Divide

Flips perspectives, featuring essays by civilians who discuss WWI as inspiration for their work on American veterans. The scholars and writers in this section suggest that learning about WWI and its soldiers can help bridge the civilian-military divide in today's world.

More Genteel Than Grim: Letters Home from WWI

—DAVID CHRISINGER, George Orwell Award for Distinguished Contribution to Honesty 

    and Clarity in Public Language, 2022

I Never Saw Him Drowning: Great-Uncle Charlie and the Great War  

—PHILIP METRES, PhD 

Fictions of Rehabilitation  

—MARK WHALAN, PhD 

“TWITOS”: Journalist Connects French Youth to WWI via Twitter  

—STEPHANIE TROUILLARD 

Part 3 WWI and Women Too: Fighters, Nurses, Writers

Mirrors the MeToo movement that has stirred women from around the world to both stand up and to fortify their fight for physical, emotional, and intellectual equality.

WWI Navy Yeoman (F) First Class Marjory Stoneman Douglas: Writing Advice, Writing Life 

—JERRI BELL, veteran 

WWI Female Marine Sergeant Lela Leibrand  

—TRACY CROW, veteran 

Equal Pay, Equal Benefits: Loretta Perfectus Walsh, the First Enlisted Woman in the U.S. Military 

—KAYLA WILLIAMS, veteran 

Ellen N. La Motte’s The Backwash of War. Did a Censored Female Writer Inspire Hemingway’s Famous Style?  

—CYNTHIA WACHTELL, PhD 

Josephine, Government Girl 1918  

—MARGARET THOMAS BUCHHOLZ 

Aline Kilmer: When the War Poet’s Wife is a Poet, Too 

—PETER MOLIN, PhD, veteran 

Letters That You Will Not Get: Women’s Voices from the Great War  

—SUSAN WERBE

Part 4 WWI Mattered for Black Lives

Reflects the call for a real reckoning with racist and colonial pasts, knocking down statues, rectifying laws, and bringing the overlooked accomplishments of African Americans to light.

Iraq and Afghanistan Deployment Inspired by Ida B. Wells’ WWI Fight  

—JASMINE WALKER MOTUPALLI, veteran 

The Great War’s Far-Reaching Influence for Black, Male Actors Today  

—DARRYL DILLARD 

First I Said No: Writing about WWI African American Doctors in Fort George G. Meade’s 100-Year History  

—MARY L. DOYLE, veteran 

War Isn’t the Only Hell: 100 Years Later, Time to Tell the Truth  about the African American and Lost Generation  Experiences 

—KEITH GANDAL, PhD 

Their Only Crime: African American WWI Poet James Seamon Cotter, Jr.  

—CONSTANCE M. RUZICH, PhD 

The Story of Freddie Stowers, the First African American Recipient of the WWI Medal of Honor 

—COURTNEY L. TOLLISON HARTNESS, PhD 

Part 5 Bravery and Resilience: Native Americans in WWI

Echoes the actions of American sports teams who have reconsidered their titles deemed offensive by Native Americans.

Writing the Story of California’s Muwekma Ohlone Indian Tribe in WWI  

—ALAN LEVENTHAL, PhD 

Soldiers Unknown   

—CHAG LOWRY (YUROK/MAIDU/ACHUMAWI) 

—ILLUSTRATIONS BY RAHSAN EKEDAL

Part 6 From the Other Side of No Man's Land

Counters the idea that we live in a world made up of increasing protective bubbles. Social media, gated communities, and polarizing politics have made us associate more with people like us despite globalization's promise to bring different parts of the world closer together.

Remembering and Forgetting the Great War in Germany 

—DAVID EISLER, PhD, veteran 

Demonizing the Enemy: One in the Same  

—ERNEST LUCAS MCCLEES, PhD, veteran 

The Enemy You Killed  

—RUTH EDGETT 

The 2014 Sainsbury’s Christmas Truce Advertisement:  Cinematic Memorial in Action  

—ANNA RINDFLEISCH 

Remembering and Forgetting: Some Photographs from a Small Corner of the Great War  

—MARK FACKNITZ, PhD 

Beyond Friend or Foe. World War I American Immigrant Poetry: A Digital Humanities Project  

—LORIE A. VANCHENA, PhD 

Part 7 Peace Brokered and the Aftermath

Turns to conflicts that have origins in WWI but deepened after the Treaty of Versailles and continued into the modern world: WWII, the Cold War, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

When the War Didn’t End: Polar Bears in Russia and the Red Summer  

—ROB BOKKON 

Brest-Litovsk: Eastern Europe’s Forgotten Father

—ADRIAN BONENBERGER, veteran 

The Balfour Declaration: An Alternative History

—SIMONE ZELITCH 

A New Look at Anne Frank, Her Father, and WWI Through Literature and History  

—"The Literary Perspective: Otto Frank and the Sergeant” DAVID R. GILLHAM 

—"The Historical Perspective: World Wars Mirrored in the Secret Annex” PETER DE BOURGRAAF, PhD 

Part 8 WWI Literature: Critical and Personal Reflections

Explores WWI's shocks to the individual and collective consciousness that Virginia Woolf captured in writing her essay "The Leaning Tower" in 1940: "Then suddenly, like a chasm in a smooth road, the war came." Just as the unprecedented violence of WWI changed warfare forever, poets and writers of WWI manifested a deep, indelible shift in style, form, and content.

Faulkner Stole My Father’s War Wound: Centennial Reflections on William Faulkner and John Reid  

—PANTHEA REID, PhD 

Waking Up to History: John Dos Passos, the Cut-up, and World War I 

—M.C. ARMSTRONG, PhD 

Robert Frost: A Poet for Whom Life and War Were Trials by Existence  

—JIM DUBINSKY, PhD, veteran 

War Without Allegory: World War I, Tolkien, and The Lord of the Rings  

—RACHEL KAMBURY 

The October Revolution, Russia Occupation of Persia:  WWI Soldier Viktor Shklovsky’s A Sentimental Journey:  Memoirs, 1917-1922  

—MICHAEL CARSON, veteran 

Army of Shadows 

—ROXANA ROBINSON 

Lucien and Albert Camus: WWI Father, WWII Resistance Son 

—JENNIFER ORTH-VEILLON, PhD

Part 9 Poetic Responses to WWI

Features poems written during the WWI Centennial Commemoration.

Have You Ever Tried to Write a War Poem?

—FALEEHA HASSAN 

All the Way Home  

—JANE CLARKE 

The Land Remembers and Zone Rouge 

—AMALIE FLYNN, PhD 

How to Remember Your Ancestors’ Names 

—DREW PHAM, veteran 

Yoga and Animals: Inspiration for WWI Poetry

—JANE SATTERFIELD 

WWI Touches Pablo Picasso  

—DAVID ALLEN SULLIVAN 

How Do Wars Begin? 

—DONALD ANDERSON, veteran 

Part 10 WWI in Fiction Today

Expresses the demands on writers of contemporary novels that take place in the WWI-era, and features excerpts of works-in-progress. 

A Distant Field: America’s Great War Highlanders

—RJ MACDONALD, veteran 

Writing in the Post-War World of Agatha Christie

—CHRISTOPHER HUANG, veteran 

Wiring Party 

—ANDRIA WILLIAMS 

A Pretty Tame One 

—BENJAMIN SONNENBERG