First published 2012
Captain Cartwright moves through the mud and chaos of the Western Front, collecting the words his fellow soldiers create to survive each day. From 1914 to 1918, he records how Tommy invents new meanings for old words and borrows phrases from distant languages. Gas cylinders become code words. Rum earns nicknames. Hindustani terms for pleasure slip into English conversation. Each entry in his growing lexicon reveals how young men and women forge bonds through shared language while bearing the weight of duty. Cartwright watches as desperation births gallows humor and necessity creates vocabulary. His letters home capture more than military slang. They preserve the voices of a generation that refused to let war steal their humanity. The words they spoke became their shield against horror and their bridge to each other.
Genres: fiction, historical-fiction, 20th-century, war
Vibes: emotional, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: found-family, war
Setting: Western Front
Period: 1914-1918
336 pages · Hardcover · Headline Book Publishing