Not sure if this goes here or in IMHO
How common is it for spouses to travel with their partners to a conflict?
As a bit of a background, I was looking at 5 relatives who had travelled from Canada to England and eventually, France/Belgium for World War 1
Of them 3 of them were single males who had no spouses.
Of the 2 that had spouses, one spouse stayed back in Canada as they had children there.
The last spouse travelled with him to England where they had a daughter born there just before he was killed in France in 1918.
Note that of these 5 Canadians who had joined the war effort
2 were killed in battle
1 was killed in a train accident while returning to Canada just after the war. (The one with children in Canada)
1 was subjected to a gas attack and was put out of the war (Although he did live to be 90)
The last one suffered no ill effects from the war to my knowledge (aside from the usual fog of war)
Back to the original question, the only spouse that travelled was the only one who had no children at the time so I suspect a couple who has no children would be the most likely to travel
How common is this?
It was more common in earlier wars like the Civil War and the Revolutionary War. At that time, the military relied on wives and other “camp followers” to do things like cooking and to provide nursing services, and to do things like boil water after battles so that the men could use the hot water to clean their black powder muskets. In later wars, these services would be provided by actual military personnel. A lot of prostitutes also followed the camps around, which led to some respectable wives having their reputations a bit sullied even though they never engaged in prostitution while serving in their husband’s camp.
In WWI the military no longer relied on camp followers and wives following their husbands off to war was much less common, though it did happen on occasion. Most women stayed home, and many took on factory jobs to aid in the war effort.
Thanks for the response.
As I mentioned, the one spouse that did travel did not go to the battlefield but stayed behind in Scotland.
I thought it was surprising that she travelled with him to England as the rest of her family was back in Canada and she was only 17 years old then when travelling with her spouse.
I strongly suspect that she wanted to be with him as much as possible and couldn’t bear to be away from him.
The worst part of the story is that only a few months after her daughter was born, her spouse was killed in action and she never remarried again!!!
During WWII, my mom accompanied my dad through some of his aviation cadet training. She had typing and stenography skills and experience working as a secretary. She worked as the secretary to either the 1st Sgt or Sgt Major of the the school until dad got transferred somewhere where she couldn’t go.