Martha Hanna. Anxious Days and Tearful Nights: Canadian War Wives during the Great War.

Abstract

The great World War I conscript armies of continental Europe required married men to serve. In Great Britain, conscription was introduced in 1916, and in the course of that year expanded from unmarried to married men. Canadian conscription, imposed in 1917, began with unmarried men but the war ended before married men were forced into service. Almost all the married men who served in the Canadian Expeditionary Force were volunteers, and they enlisted in droves. The wives and children they left behind have received relatively little attention, but they find their historian in Martha Hanna. Offering what she calls a “composite portrait of Canada’s war wives,” Hanna’s book makes for illuminating and at times heartbreaking reading as it tracks the trials and tribulations of women coping with anxiety about their husbands’ safety even as they struggled to make ends meet and raise children alone. Given that Canada’s married soldiers were mostly volunteers, Hanna begins Anxious Days and Tearful Nights by inverting a familiar recruitment slogan to ask, “Daddy, why did you go to war?” Volunteers were frequently British-born immigrants who saw enlistment as patriotic support for the homeland. Some saw the war in idealistic terms, while others sought to escape unhappy marriages. Many were motivated by the desire to boost their family’s income, especially in the war’s first year, when an economic recession that began in 1913 kept many people in straitened circumstances. Enlistment ensured that a man’s wife received a monthly Separation Allowance of roughly $20 funded by the federal government. A soldier could opt to assign a portion of his pay to go directly to his family, and wives received supplemental support from the Canadian Patriotic Fund, a private organization dependent on donations that Hanna asserts was unique among belligerent nations. By Hanna’s calculation, the average Canadian war wife had between $50 and $60 per month; it was a meager sum, especially as the cost of living rose by late 1916.