Liberty Bonds and Bayonets: A Marguerite Martyn Book

THE GREAT WAR, 1917-1918

They were husband and wife; World War I forced them apart. Clair Kenamore was a reporter with a camera on the Western Front; Marguerite Martyn covered the home front with an interviewer’s pen and artist’s sketchbook.

He reported what he saw: Doughboy Sammy Goldberg coming back from the trenches with seventeen German prisoners. Blond French girls throwing flowers and flirting in German with boisterous American troops. Men dying.

She asked questions, and in her drawings, her imagination soared. Fashionable women wearing fanciful war-themed hats. Befuddled diners wondering how to get around wartime food regulations. Fearful women asking: Marry before he goes overseas, or wait ‘til he’s home? Strong women taking on men’s jobs: running a lathe, operating an elevator, building airplanes, driving trucks. Young boys knitting sweaters.

You learn what historians can’t tell you. How did civilians become soldiers? Who took their places on the job and in the fields? What did mustard gas smell like?

You smile, too: Santa Claus checks a shopping list. A uniformed cupid challenges a draft-dodger. A busybody woman peers through a periscope. Camp followers get booted. And a peach eats a peach.