Wartime Experiences Research Articles

From Displacement to Marginalization: Tonga-Goba Wartime Experiences in the Mid-Zambezi Valley, 1976–1979

In the 1970s, the Zimbabwe People’s Revolutionary Army (ZIPRA) opened its bases in the mid-Zambezi Valley, at Paradise and Mayovhe, under Chief Mola’s territory. This move by ZIPRA was motivated by a variety of reasons. The most important fact was that the Tonga-Goba people of this region were ready to support the war because they wanted to regain control of the riverscape from which they were displaced by the colonial state during the late 1950s when the Kariba dam was constructed. This paper examines how the colonial displacements of the Tonga-Goba people, their marginalization as well as the colonial regime’s “broken promise” all shaped their participation in the Zimbabwe War of Liberation in the 1970s. To explore this history of war from below, our study builds largely from the local Tonga-Goba narratives.

Factors influencing nursing students' willingness to volunteer during wartime emergencies: A cross sectional study in Israel

BackgroundDuring wartime emergencies, the Ministry of Health in Israel faces workforce shortages, prompting consideration of nursing students as auxiliary support. Understanding the factors influencing nursing students' willingness to volunteer, is essential for effective crisis preparedness. AimThe research seeks to identify how self-efficacy, positive attitudes, institutional support, knowledge, age, gender, prior experience, and familial obligations impact nursing students' readiness to volunteer during mass casualty events in wartime. DesignThis study employed a descriptive, cross-sectional research approach. SettingsNursing schools in Israel. ParticipantsA convenience sample of 300 nursing students who had commenced their studies for at least one month. The study targeted nursing students across Israel, regardless of their specific school affiliation. Recruitment was conducted through various channels, including face-to-face recruitment, emails, and synchronous chat groups. MethodsData were collected using a structured self-report questionnaire based on Bandura's self-efficacy theory and adapted from existing literature. Statistical analyses, included t-tests, Pearson correlation, and linear rand logistic regressions. ResultsThe study found high levels of intent (M = 3.33, SD = 0.83), perceived self-efficacy (M = 3.25, SD = 0.54), and positive attitudes towards volunteering during wartime (M = 3.57, SD = 0.54) among nursing students towards volunteering during wartime. Significant correlations were observed between students' willingness to volunteer during wartime and factors such as positive attitudes to volunteer during wartime (r = 0.543, p < 0.01), perceived self-efficacy (r = 0.313, p < 0.01), institutional support (r = 0.313, p < 0.01), knowledge (r = 0.138, p < 0.05), age (r = 0.179, p < 0.01), and previous volunteering experience (r = 0.158, p < 0.01). Regression analyses indicated that positive attitudes towards wartime volunteering, perceived self-efficacy, institutional support, and prior volunteering were significant predictors of the intention to volunteer. ConclusionsNursing students in Israel demonstrate a high willingness to volunteer during wartime, influenced by factors such as perceived self-efficacy, positive attitudes towards volunteering, and institutional support. While these findings suggest potential areas for enhancing volunteerism, further research is needed to assess the effectiveness of targeted training and support interventions. Nonetheless, fostering these key factors could strengthen the healthcare system's capacity to respond to wartime emergencies.

The Echo of Revolution: The Influence of War on Benjamin Rush’s Medical Theory

ABSTRACT During the American War for independence, young and ambitious medical men entered the ranks of the Continental Army. Philadelphia physician and chemistry professor Benjamin Rush was one such American practitioner who went on after the conflict to argue for a uniquely American medical practice. However, Rush’s wartime experiences have largely been treated in a vacuum with little connection to his later medical work. Despite this disconnect, much of Rush’s own writing and teaching directly or indirectly is pulled from wartime experiences. His interpretation of those experiences changed from a means of supporting British medical ideas in the 1770s to challenging them in the 1800s. This change mirrors and engages with other changes in American identity and use of science to craft that identity in the wake of the Revolutionary War.

The Forgotten Narratives: Mobilization, Recruitment and Wartime Experiences of World War Two African Servicemen from Southern Rhodesia, (Colonial Zimbabwe) c.1939–1945

The Forgotten Narratives: Mobilization, Recruitment and Wartime Experiences of World War Two African Servicemen from Southern Rhodesia, (Colonial Zimbabwe) c.1939–1945

Wartime experience of visual impressions: K. A. Korovin and the problem of camouflaging positions at the front during World War I

During World War I the development of new methods for camouflaging the troops demanded the involvement of not only military professionals but also of the artists. Thus, a famous artist and Academician of Painting, Konstantin Alekseevich Korovin (1861–1939), cooperated with the paint-disguise and camouflage service established on the South-West Front on the initiative of brothers A. N. and N. N. Suchkov. The documents deposited at the Russian State Military Historical Archives reflect Korovinʼs interest in the problems of military camouflage, his trips to the front and his inventions. In the documents published here (the letters to the Suchkov brothers; a memorandum and an explanatory report to the chief of engineers of the armies of the South-West Front; instructions for the so-called “color finder” for determining the color of paint after drying) the artist outlined the problems of camouflage at the front, gave advice on the best ways of concealing positions (camouflaging trenches by paint spraying, setting up observation points that merge with the terrain, the use of camouflage nets). Korovin was aware of the innovations in camouflage in the armies of Russiaʼs allies, and urged to adopt the best of what they had. According to Korovin, the leadership of camouflage teams should be entrusted to competent officers familiar with the rules and specifics of perception of color combinations. The documents suggest that Korovin was one of the pioneers in the military science of camouflage in Russia.

Family, global conflict, and imperial migration: Paul Messi’s First World War

ABSTRACT The German Empire collapsed at the end of the First World War, necessitating a re-negotiation of the legal and social status of its former imperial subjects. This article discusses the wartime experience of Paul Messi, a Cameroonian language assistant at the Colonial Institute, Hamburg. Messi moved to Germany in 1913 to succeed his uncle, Karl Atangana who had returned to Cameroon to become Paramount Leader of the Ewondo and Bane. Atangana had secured the position in Germany for his nephew along with providing him with a stipend. The outbreak of war saw Messi stranded in Hamburg, suffering from ill health and cut off from financial assistance. However, due to Atangana’s petitioning to the German government, his daughter Katharina, and Messi were reunited in Madrid before repatriation in 1919. The return to Cameroon was difficult, Messi, despite his desire to leave Germany, was treated as a suspect person by the French authorities. Focusing on Messi’s account of his experiences, this paper highlights how the war not only disrupted intra-empire familial connections but also how these connections enabled a negotiated return to Mandate Cameroon in the early post-war period.

The Mystery of the Tanganyika Knife and the Rediscovery of the Polish Refugee Experience of Britain’s Wartime Empire

My Polish grandmother was sixteen when she arrived in Bolton. By the time teenagers today sit their GCSE examinations, she had travelled the distance of almost three-quarters of the globe. From Drohobycz in Poland (now modern Ukraine) following the arrest and murder of her father by the USSR’s NKVD aged 6, to a detention camp in Soviet Kyrgyzstan, to Iran, Tanganyika, and South Africa, before finally settling in England. Hers is a story of Stalin’s crimes, but it is simultaneously a story of how refugees utilised the global connections and routes created by the British Empire. It is also a postwar story of how she made a home in the nation that facilitated her wartime life. She carried with her few possessions, bar a bone letter-opener knife with an elephant carved into the handle, which she passed down to me. Bringing scholarship around refugee experiences, family histories, and material culture into conversation, this journal article seeks to achieve three things. First, it brings the story of the Polish refugees who utilised the imperial routes, colonies, dominions, and nations of British ‘interest’ to greater attention. While there has been some research into this in Britain, it has been an under-explored aspect of wartime experience which shows us as much about the war in the East as it does the inherently global nature of the war. Second, it asks what role the memory of the Polish refugee experience serves, both for those who lived through it and for subsequent generations. And finally, it addresses how this memory, beyond the Polish diaspora, might be used to explore more the nuances of life during the Second World War.

Diabelskie koło historii. Poetyki miejskie w powieści Aleksieja Iwanowa Cienie Teutonów

Shadows of the Teutons, a novel by the contemporary Russian writer Aleksei Ivanov, was published in 2021. The story unfolds across two different time periods. Some events take place in 1457 during the siege of Marienburg, the capital of the Teutonic Order’s State, and the Polish-Teutonic conflict serves as a starting point for the depiction of later battles, in 1945, within the former East Prussia, now known as the Kaliningrad Oblast. This article examines the means used to create the urban spaces depicted in the novel and their transformation as a result of armed conflicts. It focuses on the urban landscapes of Baltiysk (Pillau) and Malbork (Marienburg), which exhibit a complex identity and strong interconnections at various levels of the narrative structure. The analysis explores somatopoetics and thanatopoetics, two categories the author employs to describe places, as well as the auditory and olfactory dimensions of everyday wartime experiences, memoryscapes, Teutonic castles and underground settings such as cellars, bunkers, catacombs, secret passages and tunnels.

The First World War and Ford Madox Ford’s Short Stories, 1914–1920

This article analyses together, for the first time, Ford Madox Ford’s short stories about the First World War. A surprisingly unfamiliar form for Ford, who valued allusion, subtlety, and omission as narrative devices, we see in these stories his first attempts to parse his experience of wartime and, subsequently, military service. It is also an aspect of Ford’s writing which has received little previous critical comment. The wartime and post-war short stories are approached chronologically: ‘The Scaremonger: A Tale of the War Times’ (1914), ‘Fun!—It’s Heaven’ (1915), ‘Pink Flannel’ (1919), ‘The Colonel’s Shoes’ (1920), ‘Enigma’ ([1920–1922] 1999), and ‘The Miracle’ (1928). The contemporary debates in which Ford intervened are highlighted by returning to their original periodical publications, and extensive reference to a range of his non-fictional periodical contributions establishes new connections among his wartime writing. Here I bring together for the first time these short stories, arguing that Ford’s refracting of the war through the lens of his impressionism is distinctive as an early response to war, trauma, and neurosis and is vital to the genesis of his later successes in prose, notably the Parade’s End novel tetralogy (1924–1928).

The Political Legacies of Wartime Resistance: How Local Communities in Italy Keep Anti-fascist Sentiments Alive

Can past wartime experiences affect political behavior beyond those who lived through them? We argue that local experiences of armed resistance leave political legacies that “memory entrepreneurs” can translate into contemporary political action via a community-based process of intergenerational transmission consisting of three core activities – memorialization, localization, and mobilization. We empirically substantiate this argument in Italy, where an intense armed resistance movement against Nazi-Fascist forces took place in the 1940s. We combine statistical analysis of original data across Italian municipalities and within-case analysis of a purposively selected locality to show how the past impacts the present via the preservation and activation of collective memories. This study improves our understanding of the processes of long-term transmission, emphasizes armed resistance as a critical source of the long-term political legacies of war, and explores its political effects beyond electoral and party politics.

Impact of the War in Ukraine on the Ability of Children to Recognize Basic Emotions.

This study assessed emotion recognition skills in school-age children in wartime conditions in Ukraine. An online survey based on the concept of basic emotions was administrated to a sample of 419 schoolchildren from Ukraine and a control group of 310 schoolchildren from the Czech Republic, aged 8 to 12. There is no difference in judging the intensity of anger and fear by Ukrainian children, compared with the control group. There is no evidence that the emotions of anger, fear, and sadness were better recognized in the Ukrainian group. Children from Ukraine were better at recognizing positive emotions than Czech children. Increased risks of threats and wartime experience do not impair the accuracy of identification of emotions like fear or the assessment of intensity of basic emotions by children who experience war in Ukraine. Still, it is important to continue studying the long-term consequences of military conflicts in order to deepen the understanding of their impact on human mental functioning.

Beyond the Neurologist: Charles Foix as a Poet and a Playwright

Background: Charles Foix (1882–1927) may be mostly remembered today due to his contributions to vascular neurology and the syndromes that bear his name, such as the Foix-Alajouanine syndrome. However, he also developed a literary career and composed poetry and a vast collection of plays, often dealing with biblical themes or figures from Greek mythology. Summary: His poetry was often inspired by his own experiences during the First World War, in which he was assigned to serve as a medical officer in Greece, becoming enamored with his surroundings and the classical lore. Key Messages: The authors explore Foix’s poetry and drama and their relationship to his overall work as a neurologist, including his wartime experiences.

Ratnik, obaveštajac, političar: prilozi za biografiju pukovnika Tanasija Dinića do 1941. godine

Colonel Tanasije Dinić’s personality and contributions are principally associated with the era of the Second World War, during which he held a prominent role as a collaborator and served as one of Milan Nedić’s ministers. This article seeks to undertake a historiographical reconstruction of Colonel Dinić’s activities within the borders of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia leading up to the onset of the Second World War. The authors underscore three distinctive phases in Colonel Dinić’s life. The initial section of the study meticulously examines his wartime experiences, commencing from his enrollment in the Military Academy’s Lower School and extending to the early years subsequent to the establishment of the SHS Kingdom. The subsequent section of the article delves into Colonel Dinić’s significant contributions to the establishment, expansion, and management of an intelligence network with a specific focus on Albania and Bulgaria. The third section of the article extensively addresses Colonel Tanasije Dinić’s tenure as a member of the Yugoslav Radical Community (JRZ) and the National Assembly. The scholarly foundation of this section rests upon pertinent literature and archival sources, which have been systematically employed to craft the narrative presented in the paper.

Women Playwrights at the Crossroads: A Comparative Study of Ireland and Korea in the Mid-Twentieth Century

This paper examines plays by Irish and Korean women playwrights whose work is often neglected in their national canons and in the male-dominated theatre scene of the mid-twentieth century. The cases of Ireland and Korea overlap in compelling ways with discussions of modernity that are being reconstructed from the perspectives of colonial subjugation (under Britain and Japan) and wartime experience (in the Irish Civil War of 1922-23 and Korean War of 1950-53). There is a close relationship between these women writers’ marginalised place in their respective countries’ literary and theatrical scene and the process of Irish and Korean modernisation. The paper conducts a comparative analysis of works by Teresa Deevy, Kim Ja-rim, Maura Laverty and Jeon Ok-joo, highlighting the various thematic, political and formal strategies that these playwrights adopted at a time when their nations were ‘at the crossroads’. Against the grand narratives of ‘the nation’, women playwrights focused on depicting the aesthetics of daily life, emphasising aspects that had been neglected or marginalised in the discourse of modernity/coloniality. They dismantled clichés of dutiful wives and pacifist mothers, choosing instead to create complex and authentic depictions of femininity, endowing their female characters with a potent political voice in the public sphere. By reassessing their plays from a transnational feminist perspective, the paper seeks to expand feminist discourses in both Irish and Korean theatre history.

Contemporary diagnosis and management of colorectal injuries: What you need to know.

Colorectal injuries are commonly encountered by trauma surgeons. The management of colorectal injuries has evolved significantly over the past several decades, beginning with wartime experience and subsequently refining with prospective randomized studies. Colon injuries were initially nonoperative, evolved toward fecal diversion for all, and then became anatomic based with resection and primary anastomosis with selective diversion, and now primary repair, resection with primary anastomosis, and delayed anastomosis after damage-control laparotomy are all commonplace. Rectal injuries were also initially considered nonoperative until diversion came into favor. Diversion in addition to direct repair, presacral drain placement, and distal rectal washout became the criterion standard for extraperitoneal rectal injuries until drainage and washout fell out of favor. Despite a large body of evidence, there remains a debate on the optimal management of some colorectal injuries. This article will focus on how to diagnose and manage colorectal injuries. The aim of this review is to provide an evidence-based summary of the contemporary diagnosis and management of colorectal injuries.

East Asian translations of Jean-Paul Sartre’s pre-1950 literary works

Abstract Starting from his first appearance in an East-Asian literary magazine and ending with his last works to be translated before the decline of his popularity in Hong Kong and Taiwan during the Cold War, the period 1938–1975 saw extensive translations of Sartre’s literary works in East-Asia (Japan, Mainland China, Taiwan, Hong Kong). This study examines Sartre’s literary works published before 1950, by which most of his renowned ones have been published in France. Divided into Japanese and Chinese sections, it first elaborates on the state of translation of Sartre’s literary works in East Asia from 1938 to 1975 before explaining the phenomenon of multiple translated versions and their differences. The focus then turns to two specific translation cases, one in Japanese and another in Chinese, as examples to illustrate the relation between the vibrant scene of translation attempts within the East Asian region and the wartime situations of the Second World War and the Cold War era. By conducting these investigations, this essay aims to outline how, in Japan, the wartime situation impacted the practice and publication of translations and how, in the case of China, the wartime experience of translators shaped their translation strategies and interpretations regarding Sartre’s literary works.

‘War is Like This’: Jirga, History and Genre Tropes

The critically acclaimed 2018 Australian film Jirga follows an ex-Australian soldier, Mike Wheeler, who returns to Afghanistan three years after a firefight during which he kills a civilian. Wheeler returns at risk of his death to confess his guilt to the man's community and the film examines themes of forgiveness and revenge, guilt, trauma, justice, and, as one Afghani tells Wheeler when he explains what he is doing back in Afghanistan, whether ‘war is like this’. ) This article will explore the ways Jirga uses the generic forms of the war film to convey meaning; it interrogates the usefulness of positioning films as either adhering to or subverting generic tropes, and instead points to the historically contingent evolution of generic tropes across time and place. With this understanding we can see genre tropes as complex, ambiguous, and sometimes even contradictory, attempts to develop meaning out of wartime experience.

Solidarity and the Aesthetics of Pain: Soviet Documentary Film and the Vietnam War

AbstractThe Soviet campaign in support of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam in the Vietnam War saturated Soviet public culture in the late 1960s and early 1970s. It was the longest solidarity action in Soviet history and the first to reach mass television audiences. This article examines the production and reception of a televised documentary film about the Vietnam War made by Konstantin Simonov – a celebrity writer who played a crucial role in Soviet culture during World War II, and then, in the post-war period, in the struggle to come to terms with terrible truths about Stalinism and the chaos and trauma that war had rendered. Simonov's film presented the Vietnam War in lyrical rather than analytical terms, calling upon viewers to draw connections between the suffering of the Vietnamese and the Soviet wartime experience and to enact their solidarity with the Vietnamese in terms of feeling. The film proposes a solidarity of pain and an understanding of war and wartime suffering as elemental and overwhelming. In dozens of letters to Simonov, we find an understanding and appreciation of this vision, which decentres Vietnam and instead sends viewers on a journey back to Soviet history and trauma.

“Like we would help brothers or sisters”? Practising Solidarity with Greek Civil War Refugees in Socialist Czechoslovakia and the GDR in the Shadow of World War II

AbstractThis article investigates the solidarity campaigns supporting refugees from the Greek Civil War (1946–1949) in post-war Czechoslovakia and the emerging German Democratic Republic. Framed as an important bridge between the interwar and later Cold War forms of socialist internationalism, this case sheds light on its transitory character, revealing the narrative shift from anti-fascist to anti-imperialist contexts and the increasingly institutionalized and ritualized solidarity. Thus, not only was practising solidarity already an integral part of post-war socialist regimes, but it also served a variety of functions, contributing to the legitimization and identity of the Eastern bloc. Based on archival documents and press, the article uncovers the deployment of analogical institutional structures employed by both states, thus opening up the sphere of interaction with their citizens, mobilized to become involved in various ways. The two countries, however, departed from different positions, dealing with opposing legacies of the wartime experience, which influenced the motivations employed in their campaigns. Entangled in discourses of guilt, heroism, and victimhood, yet aligned under the proclaimed values of socialist brotherhood and anti-fascism, building internationalist solidarity in both countries worked alongside and even boosted attempts to overcome the obstacle of the Nazi past, both internally and in their mutual relationship. This article thus contributes to a better understanding of how internationalist solidarity functioned as a platform to build bridges – not only towards the “South”, but also within the Eastern bloc.

Mitigating Persecution: Intermarried Families and the Significance of Social Networks during the Holocaust in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia

Abstract This article focuses on the wartime experience of an intermarried family in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. It examines the intermarried couple Marie and Jiří Klouda, their daughters, Helena and Mariana, and their closest relatives among the Eisner and Klouda families. Using a microhistorical perspective, this study focuses on the experiences and strategies of particular individuals and their social circles to understand their responses to shifting circumstances. Although I focus on these two families, my questions pertain to the significance of non-Jewish friends and relatives for Jews during the Holocaust. In short, what difference did these social and familial bonds make to Jewish family members? The study shows that familial and social bonds had tangible outcomes in terms of facilitating important, lifesaving contacts and favors within the forced Jewish societies in the Terezín ghetto and Prague. Prewar professional, familial, and cultural networks, and the social capital they embodied, carried over into the lives of Jews forced into Terezín and into the ghettoized society in Prague. Family and friends provided significant material and emotional support for each other. This support was especially important in a family like the Eisners-Kloudas, which experienced multiple forms of victimization during the war. During the Holocaust, non-Jewish relatives and friends could not stop the processes of genocide, but they could mitigate the effects of dispossession, isolation, deprivation, and deportation.