WWI-era fountain pens.

[FrankB]

Therein lies the rub. Sailors and airmen would possibly have had more access to FP's because of their physical circumstances. They had space to store and circumstances to use FP's, if they could afford them. A ground soldier would not, or very seldom did. A hospital is a definite rear echelon facility, and the soldier borrowing a FP to write a letter sounds to be very much in order.

 

Commissioned officers might be a slightly different situation, I would think especially in British Commonwealth armed forced where the idea of social class seems to play a significant role. (I am in the U.S., so you can correct my perceptions if they are off.) $2 USD does not seem like a lot of money, but for rural people in the early 20th Century U.S. that could be a week's grocery bill for a family of four. That was a alot of money to spend on a pen. But many people could afford them. When social class plays a role, a good pen might have been seen as a necessity and money would be available for one. A sailor or air ground crewman might easily have borrowed a FP from an immediate officer.

 

In any event, I doubt that front line ground soldiers of any rank would have been inclined to hassle with a FP. But - there are always exceptions.

 

I am not trying at all to be a know it all, I hope I am being helpful. Remember, I was not there in the two world wars and I am just reporting what I have heard and seen as evidence.

Edited November 28, 2008 by FrankB

[burmeseboyz]

I hope you'll spend at least 50% of the text in discussing the pen habits of the characters and the characteristics of the pens being used. :-) Don't forget the inks!

[ANM]

to answer your question about early Parkers, I don't have exact dates but Parker was making button fillers as early as around 1913. They were making self filling pens as early as 1905. My sense of what Frank B is saying about the use of pencils is that he is correct. Most everyday writing was done with a pencil but I get a gut feeling that letters to home were done in ink as much as possible. My feeling for that is from my mom and dad. Writing a letter called for ink. I would think that doughboys in the trenches would write a letter in ink if at all possible. That does not mean every soldier owned his own pen. I do think eyedropper fillers were the most used.

 

I am pretty sure that the next world war, letters were required to be written in black ink. Letters were opened, read, censored, photo copied and the copy was sent on. Black ink was necessary for good copies. Letters were copied to avoid the possibility of micro dots transferring information.

[richardandtracy]

I talked this thread over with the boss, and she reminded me that we have a letter from my great uncle to his sister (my grandmother), dated June 1918, location 'A trench in France'. This was written in ink - the greeny-blue-black hue looks like an iron gall ink.

 

Regards

 

Richard.

Edited November 28, 2008 by richardandtracy

[dwattsjr]

There is a reprint of an article on pens and war (by Floyd Stuart) on Richard Binder's site in the "Reference Info" section.

 

Also, Parker made a pen during the First World War that they called a Trench pen. It was, if I recall correctly, an eye-dropper design but with a compartment that held ink pellets. All a soldier - or sailor - had to do was drop an ink pellet into the barrel and add a sufficient amount of water. Et voila! Ready to write letters home, dispatches, and the like.

 

[Shangas]

Could I reasonably include a few trench-pens here and there, and still have this sound authentic? Or were they not as widespread as the article mentioned above (which I have read), has led me to believe?

[DeaconKC]

I will recommend 2 sites to try

http://www.thefedoralounge.com/

a site dedicated to vintage era topics, and

http://www.surplusrifleforum.com/index.php

where we deal with vintage firearms, with a large contingent of WW1 folks.

[Robert Hughes]

Onoto advertised a trench-friendly fountain pen, to be filled with an ink tablet and water added to make ink. There are a couple eBay auctions of WW1-vintage Onoto ads right now. Here is one:

 

[Shangas]

I've heard a lot about the Fedora Lounge and it looks like a very interesting forum, I think I'll join there...

Edited November 29, 2008 by Shangas

[DeaconKC]

Make sure you say hello at either site!

[Ink Stained Wretch]

Well if that's the case, just how frequently were fountain pens used by regular soldiers, sailors and airmen in WWI? How accessible and expensive were they? So far, the only mention of a fountain pen I've made in my story is when a soldier in hospital borrows one from the doctor to write a letter home to his mother.

The wood cased pencil had been a pricey item in the middle of the 19^th Century, but better manufacturing methods and the discovery of more graphite mines brought their cost way down by the start of the 20^th Century. And the fact is that a lot of people didn't write much at all. Not only social class but level of education would count in terms of who might be wielding a fountain pen during the Great War. College was a rarity for most folks. High school graduation wasn't exactly universal either.

 

So dip pens and wood cased pencils would be prominent among all writers of the day and those people would be the ones who could read and write. In that era fountain pen use would actually say something about the person using it.

 

As for a doctor lending a wounded soldier a fountain pen, it might be a common fountain pen that was lent to the hospitalized troops, not necessarily the doctor's own fountain pen. And the soldier using it would need to know how to use it. Familiarity with the use of a fountain pen was by no means universal in those times.

 

You might want to read some fiction of those times and see how they handle some of these things. Historical novel writing is difficult stuff.

 

My sense of what Frank B is saying about the use of pencils is that he is correct. Most everyday writing was done with a pencil but I get a gut feeling that letters to home were done in ink as much as possible. My feeling for that is from my mom and dad. Writing a letter called for ink. I would think that doughboys in the trenches would write a letter in ink if at all possible. That does not mean every soldier owned his own pen. I do think eyedropper fillers were the most used.

What civilians do in time of war and what soldiers in a theater of war do are often very different. If someone at the front has the urge to write home he's not going to spend a lot of effort hunting down a particular writing instrument. He's going to use what he can get ahold of easily. Also, battlefield conditions tended to be wet in that war, as in so many wars. So letters written in water soluble fountain pen ink were more vulnerable to obliteration than ones written in pencil.

 

If you look at old movies you'll see that a lot of the time what people are using to write anything down is a pencil.

 

I am pretty sure that the next world war, letters were required to be written in black ink. Letters were opened, read, censored, photo copied and the copy was sent on. Black ink was necessary for good copies. Letters were copied to avoid the possibility of micro dots transferring information.

Some were indeed written in black ink, including the black ink marketed as "V-Mail Ink." In fact almost any ink would do. And pencil would do also. I have V-Mail from my father to my mother where he had to use a pencil. And here and there they delivered his actual pencil written letter. A wood cased pencil is far more robust than a fountain pen, and even if it breaks a pencil can still probably be used.

 

The V-Mail was used in order to cut down on the weight of the mail going back and forth over oceans. In order to keep troop morale up V-Mail was shipped by air. Although the V-Mail process did preclude the transfer of microdots I don't think that that was a practical consideration in setting up the process.

[Bill D]

I have a letter that my great uncle wrote home from France in 1919, while he was waiting to be shipped home. In it he mentions using his "trusty crescent filler" and his difficulty finding ink. He was an enlisted man in the 313th Infantry from a moderately well-off family in a small town in Maryland.

 

Bill

[Shangas]

Make sure you say hello at either site!

 

Yessir.

 

And in reply to Inkstained Wretch, I've written a fair few historical stories (it's what I like writing, it's a fun challenge), so I'm well aware of the difficulties involved. I want to try and strike a balance and to...to...make plausable mentions of items that soldiers may or may not have had access to. I realise that on the front lines, infantry was getting shelled and gassed every other day and that things at sea were not much better. But according to my research, away from the front lines, say, on leave or in hospital, things got bloody boring at the speed of light and that soldiers would fill out diaries or letters home. I wanted to make sure that the writing-tools I put in the story were the kind of things that soldiers would've had access to. Obviously a mother, wife, sister or other significant female would never have recieved a letter from her Tommy in France done on a Royal or Remington desktop, 'cause typewriters were far out of the reach of soldiers...

[mstone]

And the fact is that a lot of people didn't write much at all. Not only social class but level of education would count in terms of who might be wielding a fountain pen during the Great War. College was a rarity for most folks. High school graduation wasn't exactly universal either.

On the other hand, you were expected to be able to read and write if you graduated from the 8th grade (can't say that about today's college graduates, in my experience).

[ANM]

Soldiers did not write letters while on duty or in the trenches. They did now write on with paper on their knee while in the mud. They wrote letters while behind the lines.

[Ink Stained Wretch]

Soldiers did not write letters while on duty or in the trenches.

Of course they did! World War I was especially static for long periods of time. People spent months in deep trenches. Letter writing, for those who could, would have been some relief from the boredom. And there was mail call at the front too. Nothing motivates you to write a letter like a letter from home. I've read letters that were written from the trenches and printed after the war.

 

They did now write on with paper on their knee while in the mud. They wrote letters while behind the lines.

Well they're not going to write while the paper's in the actual mud. Certainly there were many times when it was impractical to write, but when they could some would have done so from the trenches, as well as when they were standing down or whatever.

[I am not a number]

You might be interested in this link to something that became a bit of a internet hit here in the UK a short while ago. It is a set of letters to and from a Private (Harry Lamin) in the British Army during World War 1, the letters were each put onto the website 90 years to the day after they were written and they chart the progress of one soldier from May 1917 when he went to France.

[kiavonne]

This is off topic, I know, but I wonder if there were ever any support programs then as there are now as in "Support Our Troops." I wonder how many did not have family with which to correspond, wonder if there were the anonymous notes of encouragement then like now. I was drawn into a small support group at my work, not because I had family in service (my grandfather was the last of my family to serve in the military), but because a co-worker's son was injured in an ambush in Fallujah, and it just seemed to strike home, then. I didn't know them well, but I was the one who took the initial call at work, and it just struck home, and I could no longer distance myself from the impact of the war.

[Shangas]

Soldiers did not write letters while on duty or in the trenches. They did now write on with paper on their knee while in the mud. They wrote letters while behind the lines.

 

WWI was a stalemate from September of 1914 until November of 1918 when the casefire was declared. I'm pretty sure that during those four years, you would've written a few letters in the trenches.

[richardandtracy]

My great uncle was in the trenches as a young Sub-Lieutenant. In late 1917 he was issued with a mortar and a Private and told to fire the mortar at the Germans. He started on the coast and always ran the same way when the Germans returned fire. He got to the Swiss border and half way back to the coast by the end of the war.

 

He constantly wrote letters home, but because he wasn't with his regiment he never got rotated out to have some R&R time.

 

Regards

 

Richard.