After the trenches

Well, the Remembrance Day services for the centenary of the end of WW1 are still on but will fade into the background in the next few weeks. But what of the aftermath? I had several single lady  teachers who were unmarried because the young men they might have wed had been killed in Flanders in WW1. One of them formed the heroine of a novel I wrote to honour schoolteachers. The government had promised the lads going off to fight, a Land Fit for Heroes and I used that as the title. Those dear ladies took their class as their substitute families and treated us with great kindness and understanding.
Of course, the land fit for heroes never materialised and drifted into general strike and depression and teaching during those years must have tried those women's resolution but they carried on and educated those who would stand up in 1939.
In later years, I was taught by men from WW2 and, again, was treated with great understanding, they seemed to relate to our teenage rebellions and taught us to love their subjects, including Shakespeare and history.
It is as a result of those experiences that I remember the wars nd those who suffered, not just in the trenches but in the years that followed.

www.sullatoberdalton.com/books/land-fit-heroes