World War One Stories- Tales Beyond The Trenches

Five members of Maura Whitfield’s family are already serving in France when her fifteen-year-old daughter, Estelle, announces that she wants to join them, not as a soldier, but as a nurse.

Maura refuses.

Desperate to contribute to the war effort, Estelle is offered an alternative. She can remain safely in London while helping produce the shells and ammunition desperately needed by British soldiers overseas.

For Maura, it seems like the perfect compromise.

Her daughter can serve her country.

She can help bring her father and brothers home.

And, most importantly, she will be safe.

May 19th, 1915. Gallipoli.
Seventeen-year-old Ottoman soldier Fatih survives a disastrous assault against the ANZAC lines. His older brother Yusef does not return.
For four days, Fatih searches the trenches, the wounded, and every group of survivors he can find. But there is one place he cannot search: the deadly stretch of ground between the opposing armies.
Then an extraordinary agreement is reached.
For a few hours, the guns will fall silent. Soldiers from both sides will enter No Man's Land, not to fight, but to bury the thousands of men left behind.
While everyone else searches for the dead, Fatih searches for someone he refuses to believe is among them.

On a lonely stretch of the Icelandic coast, former merchant seaman Einar Bjornsson begins a new life as a lighthouse keeper.
His predecessor tells him of the strange beauty of the sea at night. Of stars that seem to leave the heavens and rest upon the water before disappearing again.
At first, Einar thinks little of the old man's stories.
Then he begins seeing the stars himself.
Night after night, strange lights appear beyond the horizon. They move. They gather. And then, without explanation, they disappear.
With a war raging beyond Iceland's shores, Einar begins to wonder if what he's watching is really as innocent as it appears.

As the Spanish flu ravages Europe, America continues to hold massive parades to raise money for the war effort.
Treasury official Tom Mercer believes the Fourth Liberty Loan Parade is essential to supporting the American soldiers fighting in France. But when a medical expert warns him that the deadly influenza has already reached Philadelphia, Tom refuses to believe it.
As the parade becomes a resounding success, Tom and his wife Judith travel to France to witness firsthand how Liberty Loan funds are helping the Allied war effort. What awaits them across the Atlantic, however, will force Tom to confront a heartbreaking truth:
Every victory comes at a price.

Thirteen-year-old Elena Petrescu and her younger brothers, Luca and Adrian, are among thousands fleeing the fighting near Romania’s border with Austria-Hungary.
Then a shell strikes their refugee column.
Their parents are killed, the survivors are scattered and the three children are left alone with nothing but the clothes they are wearing.
Their only hope is their grandfather in Bucharest.
With enemy armies advancing into Romania, Elena must lead her brothers across a country at war. They sleep in barns, search for food and learn quickly that survival sometimes requires doing things they never imagined.
After two weeks on the road, they finally reach Bucharest and begin to build a new life.
A different kind of normal.
But the war is still coming.