Letters

During WW1 the communication across the world was just developing, the internet hadn’t happened yet, and the telephone was scarce. even the electricity that the whole world basically lives on today was only available to a select few who could afford it. Letters, pictures, but mostly word of mouth was the worlds communication. With naval and air travel a lot easier, those letters and pictures could reach their destination a lot faster and easier than before.

Firstly,  North America was isolated from the rest of the world. It took a lot longer and more money to get the mail there, and word of mouth often got distorted traveling overseas. Thus, letter often never made it to the mailbox of their destination or if they did, it was weeks to months late. This caused a lack of communication between the troops and the supporters. This, combined with the over-inflated news stories coming out of the government saying that hundreds of thousands dead when only maybe hundreds or that places were taken in a matter of hours when they took weeks, just the heavy fighting was only hours. Not lies, but over-exaggerated. This caused confusion in the people at home. Life was hard enough at home; with rationing, working-everybody working- constant hounding from the government for more troops and more money, now you got the government making people’s actual vision of what life is on the front lines seem better or worse…

Now, it was known that letters sent to and from the troops would always be intercepted, read, and analyzed. Quite often the letters would be “re-worded” to suit the governments interest, making those such letters seem better or worse than what they were. Generally, letters home would make it seem like life was miserable and they needed more troops and all the help they could get, and letters from home would make life seem perfect, that everything was golden and all they had to do was win the war! This was not always true. Some postings were “nice”, i’m not going to say perfect as war is war, but you had clean clothes every day, your own room, good food, etc. So, life was not that miserable for some on the front lines. At home it was a lot more harsh than it seemed, people-including mostly women-were often working 1-3 jobs either at a factory producing guns, ammunition, tanks, cars, artillery, etc., working on farms harvesting as much food as they could, working in tailors or bootcrafters, etc. For some of them they also were paying for a kid(s). So, life back here in Canada wasn’t all that it seemed either…

So there you go. Life during WW1 was hyped up for both the front and at home, life was never lead on to be what it actually was. It was glorified or horrified most of the time…