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Growing up, I learned a lot about World War II, especially since my father and uncles were veterans of that conflict. Maybe because I was born many years after World War I, I learned very little about that war, even though my grandfather and great-uncle were veterans of that war. But that could not be all of it – I don’t remember learning much about World War I in my public school. Whatever the case, World War I is sometimes thought of as a little-known war, with mysterious causes and battles. However, it led directly to World War II, and caused the fall of the Islamic Ottoman Turkish Empire, which had threatened Christian Europe for centuries, ever since it had conquered the capital of the Byzantine Roman Empire, Constantinople, in 1453. The Austro-Hungarian Empire, from which my grandparents emigrated before the war, also fell, forming many new countries in Eastern Europe. You might say, with some truth, that World War I caused more changes than World War II did, or at least as much, so it is worth learning about.
Phyllis Fenner (1899 to 1982) was a librarian and anthologist who has put together a collection of short stories whose theme is World War I, titled Over There: Stories of World War I. A short story can be fun to read, since it is, well – short - much shorter than a novel. Collections of short stories provide a great deal of variety, and can be read one story at a time. Miss Fenner has taken most of these stories from books, a few of which are accounts of true incidents or based on true incidents, with most being historical fiction. A few of the stories are reprinted from reputable magazines such as The Saturday Evening Post or Boy’s Life. The latest story was published in 1946, but all the rest were written either before or during the 1920s, so that they are close to their source material. Some of the authors no doubt served in World War I.
Miss Fenner has included some well-known authors such as Charles Nordhoff and James Norman Hall, famous for their Mutiny on the Bounty trilogy, and Abert Payson Terhune, known for his famous collie dog stories (e.g. Lad: A Dog). One of the stories is by John Buchan, who was an amazing Christian author (see, for example, The Thirty-Nine Steps, Prester John, Salute to Adventurers, The Path of the King) and politician, who had the energy to do well in both careers. Over There: Stories of World War I, would serve well as a supplement to a middle or high school World War I unit, especially where there is not time to read a complete historical novel to go along with the history lessons. Miss Fenner has put together similar collections for the American Revolution, the Civil War, and World War II, which you might want to search out and read.