The Great War and the Trench Pen: Part

World War I, the first and last trench war, led to technical innovations that changed our way of life—including life in the trenches themselves.

- RICHARD BINDER

Dear

"At present we are staying at a farm From

Fragments from France, a 1917 book of cartoons by Captain Bruce Bairnsfather of the Royal Warwickshire Regiment, drawn from his life at the front.

World War I was a horribly brutal and tragically unnecessary conflict, and its outcome, the Treaty of Versailles, set the stage for World War II. While generating advances in aviation, medical care, and many other fields, the war also stirred the pot in the mundane world of the fountain pen. In essence, the change wrought on the manufacture and use of fountain pens by the war was related to their use by soldiers serving in the field, as pens for military use were introduced to provide those soldiers with a more convenient way to write home.

In the early months of the war, the most popular type of fountain pen on both sides of the lines was a safety pen. The majority of safety pens were retractable models like the one shown at the top of page 46, from Gold Starry of France.

Because these pens were common in the trenches, they were sometimes called "trench pens," and at least one manufacturer, the Willard Pen Company of Bayonne, New Jersey, actually used that terminology in its advertising, as shown on page 46 from a January 1917 advertisement in Office Appliances: The Magazine of Office Equipment.