Letters show how Australian women bore WWI's emotional toll at home
Bertha Monash's wartime letters reveal the hidden emotional cost women paid at home.
Bertha Monash was 21 when World War I began. Like tens of thousands of Australian women, she threw herself into patriotic work.
Bertha knitted socks, organised fundraising, and staffed Red Cross rest homes for wounded soldiers. Bertha's letters to her soldier father tell a very different story.
They show constant grief and worry hidden beneath a cheerful public mask. When her friend Harry was killed, she wrote of being very sad.
Yet she felt forced to hide her sadness. She did not want to burden her father at the front.
Bertha pushed herself to exhaustion through work as a way of coping. She filled every spare moment to avoid thinking about her losses.
Society expected women on the home front to stay brave and upbeat. It treated their emotional strength as patriotic duty.
By the time the war ended in November 1918, Bertha was physically and emotionally drained.
- 21 when WWI began
- Bertha's age
- November 11, 1918
- War's end
- Over 400,000
- Australian enlistment
- South Melbourne Red Cross rest home
- Work location
Why it mattersThese letters show a side of World War I that history rarely focuses on. They reveal the toll on those left behind. Women's work and sacrifice shaped the home front every bit as much as the battlefield.
AustraliaOver 400,000 Australians enlisted in WWI, leaving behind mothers, daughters, wives and sisters who carried hidden emotional burdens while keeping the nation going.
