1. Daughters
2. Families
3. Fathers
4. Gallipoli
5. History
6. Letters
7. Social life and customs
8. Soldiers
9. Visual literacy
10. WW1

‘Socks, Sandbags & Leeches’ presents a different telling of Australia’s involvement in WW1. We see life on the home front through a series of letters written by Ivy to her father who joined up to fight during the initial rush and excitement in 1914. The first letter is to her father who is in Egypt and mentions the problems caused on an aunt’s farm by the absence of Ivy’s uncle and cousin. The letter’s final sentence raises the question, ‘We thought you were going to France, Dad. So why are you in Egypt?’

The letters start in the months before Gallipoli through till 1919 when the world was in the grip of the Spanish flu pandemic. They provide a detailed and intimate picture of life for those fighting the war back in Australia. Housing shortages, food shortages, the constant pressure feature on men and their families to join up to fight despite the problems that created on farms and factories.

Ivy’s letters are chatty and full of details of her daily life from the annoying boys and ‘the Pests’ next door to the time taken out from school lessons to do war work, knitting socks, sewing sandbags and rolling bandages and marching about the school waving flags and singing ‘Rule Britannia.’ Patriotism, particularly in the early days of the war, dominated life on the home front. As the war progresses attitudes begin to change. The sight of men returning with injuries both physical and mental has a sobering effect. No longer is the war seen as an adventure.

Interspersed with the letters are scrapbook style pages of ‘original material’ from the WW1 period. Sourced from the National Library of Australia, they include posters, photographs, maps, newspaper cuttings, and more. Each scrapbook page includes a brief explanation of the various aspects of the war and the home front. These provide an interesting insight into the social and political history of the time, particularly the home front side of the war.

At the end of the book is a glossary of various terminology, a list of the illustrations used throughout the book and an index to the book’s contents. An unusual book that takes a different approach to the history of WW1.

1. Scholastic Australia Teachers’ notes for ‘Socks, Sandbags and Leeches’ by Pauline Deeves https://resource.scholastic.com.au/resourcefiles/8412376_48486.pdf
2. Kids’ Book Review April 2, 2016. Review by Susan Whelan of ‘Socks, Sandbags ad Leeches’ by Pauline Deeves http://www.kids-bookreview.com/2016/04/review-socks-sandbags-and-leeches.html
3. ReadPlus February 2, 2016. Review by Fran Knight of ‘Socks, Sandbags and Leeches’ by Pauline Deeves https://www.readplus.com.au/reviews/socks-sandbags-leeches-letters-to-my-anzac-dad-by-pauline-deeves
4. Australian Strategic Policy Institute. November 3, 2018 ‘The damage inflicted on the Australian Home Front by the Great War’, by Joan Beaumont. https://www.aspistrategist.org.au/the-damage-inflicted-on-the-australian-home-front-by-the-great-war
5. Sydney Living Museums. WW1 Stories from Our Museums, ‘Home Front’ https://sydneylivingmuseums.com.au/ww1/home-front
6. Sir John Monash Centre Australian National Memorial France. ‘How Children Experienced the First World War’ https://sjmc.gov.au/how-children-experienced-the-war/