Traces of War examines how the trauma of the Second World War influenced the work of the brilliant generation of writers and intellectuals who lived through it.

Traces of War examines how the trauma of the Second World War influenced the work of the brilliant generation of writers and intellectuals who lived through it.

At the end of the First World War, the landscape of the Western Front in Flanders had been transformed into a wasteland. After the war, the population returned, faced with the enormous challenge of rebuilding the region and making it inhabitable again. All traces of the war were wiped out, leaving only what was left in the ground - what is now the archaeological soil archive. Throughout the Westhoek, 30 centimetres beneath the ground and invisible to the naked eye, the archaeological remains of the war lie dormant. This book, the first of its kind, is a compendium of the findings of ten years of First World War archaeology in Belgium. Clearly written, it looks at many spectacular finds resulting from excavations at more than 150 sites in the front-line region, and also delves into the unexpected role of the landscape as the last witness of the war. These material remains from military camps, hospitals and trenches illustrate day-to-day life at the front, while also looking at the personal fates of several of the fallen soldiers - and many horses. The text is supported by a wealth of visual data, including photographs of excavated artefacts, maps, aerial photographs and other archive material.

This volume looks at Canadian women’s experiences of, and contributions to, the world wars through objects, images, and archival documents. The book tells the stories of women who worked as civilians, served in the military, volunteered their time, and grieved lost loved ones, through thematically organized vignettes. The authors place these personal narratives of individual woman, and their related material culture, in the wider context of the world wars while demonstrating that the experience of living through global conflict was as individual as a woman’s particular circumstances. Drawing from the collections of the Canadian War Museum, the Canadian Museum of History, and other public and private collections in Canada, Material Traces of War brings largely unknown material culture collections to public view and draws attention to the untold stories of women and war.

Traces of the Great War is a remarkable, original collection of 18 thought provoking graphic short stories bridging the past and present. Internationally-acclaimed comic book artists, graphic novelists and writers, all of them explore the continued relevance and resonance of the First World War and its legacy in our lives today, creating emotion and reflexions.

Bastogne in Belgium, Christmas 1944. Plagued by biting cold and the nerve-wracking sound of exploding mortar bombs, American soldiers sang Christmas carols. They ate their meagre rations, yearning for well-laid Christmas dinner tables and roasted turkey. On the Eastern front, German military assembled to listen to Christmas music on the radio, if they had a little respite from the bloody battle against the advancing Red Army. After reading the latest mail from Germany, they wiped away their tears, thinking of their families back home. In liberated Paris as well as in other European cities, Christmas was celebrated no matter how limited the circumstances may have been. In the major cities in the western part of the Netherlands, occupied by the Germans, civilians scraped the very last bits of food together for a Christmas dinner that could not appease their hunger. POWs in camps all over the world looked forward to Christmas parcels from home. Even in Nazi concentration camps, inmates found hope in Christmas, although their suffering continued inexorably. Christmas Under Fire, 1944 describes the circumstances in which the last Christmas of World War II was celebrated by military, civilians and camp inmates alike. Even in the midst of war's violence, Christmas remained a hopeful beacon of western civilization.