On the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month, 1918, the guns that had decimated Europe and a generation of her youth finally fell silent. After four long years, the War to End All Wars was over. Even a century on, that optimistically named conflict still shapes the world, if mostly in the mold of its bloodier sequel. Despite that lasting geopolitical legacy, the deepest wounds left by World War I were on those who did the fighting.
In her memoir Testament of Youth (1933), British author Vera Brittain captures the central trauma of her time. Like so many others in her peer group, Brittain's school plans were derailed by the outbreak of war. She became a nurse with the Voluntary Aid Detachment, caring for wounded soldiers in England and France. Much of the book is aimed at the many young men in her life who were subsequently slain: her brother Edward Brittain (killed during a counterattack in Italy), her fiancé Roland Leighton (shot by a sniper in France), and her friends Victor Richardson and Geoffrey Thurlow, both equally ill-fated.
In 2014, Alicia Vikander and Kit Harington starred in a film adaptation of Testament of Youth. Brittain's original book extended through 1925. Her later years, chronicled in Testament of Experience (1957), were focused on anti-war activism. Testament of Youth is available from Penguin Classics ($21, 9780143039235). --Tobias Mutter
