Lines of Courage by Jennifer A. Nielsen

In Lines of Courage, Nielsen weaves together the stories of five fictional characters from different countries to bring to life the events of World War I .

Felix Baum

Twelve-year-old Felix Baum lives in Lemberg in the Austria-Hungary empire with his mother and father. It is June 12, 1914, and Felix and his father have just left their train in Sarajevo to walk to their hotel. Nearby, they see Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the future emperor, accompanied by his wife. They are surrounded by a crowd of unhappy people.

Sarajevo is the capital of Bosnia which was annexed in the Austria-Hungary empire six years earlier. However, Bosnia did not want this and neither did its neighbour, Serbia which hoped to establish its own empire. Felix's mother had warned them not to travel to Sarajevo, that a group of Serbian rebels called the Black Hand would be there. It seems his mother may have been correct.

Felix and his father watch as the Archduke and his wife travel by open limousine through the streets crowded with angry people. It is during the Archduke's trip through the streets of Sarajevo that Felix and his father witness the assassination of the Franz Ferdinand and his wife. Because of this they leave the city immediately.

At home in Lemberg, things are quiet. At a dinner party hosted by his parents, Felix meets eleven-year-old Elsa Dressler, the daughter of a German Major. She gives Felix a carrier pigeon, so they can correspond even though Felix isn't interested. Elsa tells him that war is coming because Germany has prepared for war with a modern army and that it wants war. This prospect worries Felix.

A month after the assassination, the world awaits Serbia's answer to the Kaiser's ten demands. When the deadline passes, war is declared by Austria on Serbia. Felix's papa is to report to Vienna for service. His papa tells him that Austria-Hungary will be fighting not only Russia, but France and Great Britain as well. 

Eventually the war comes to Lemberg, which is occupied by the Russians. Felix and his mother attempt to escape but are too late and are forced to host the Russians. Captain Garinov wants his mother to identify the Jews living in Lemberg so they can be deported to camps. Felix refuses to cooperate and is chained to a fence post. With the help of Elsa and her mother, they make a daring escape out of Lemberg to Vienna.

 

Kara Webb

In their small fishing town on the British coast, thirteen-year-old Kara Webb and her mother flee from the bombs being dropped by a German airship. It is January 19, 1915. Kara's mother is a nurse who has been helping tend to wounded soldiers being sent over from the battlefields in France and Belgium to local hospitals. Kara hopes one day to be a nurse.

Seeing people wounded from the bombing, Kara runs to help her mother treat them. When a woman mentions the Red Cross, Kara's mother reveals that she has been asked to join them but that she cannot leave her daughter. Later Kara learns that her mother has been asked to work on the ambulance trains in France. Kara not only wants her mother to accept but also wants to accompany her.

Kara and her mother arrive in France to work on an ambulance train. They meet Corporal Bryant, the orderly who explains that the train is comprised of sixteen cars and can hold up to five hundred wounded. Although not officially part of the Red Cross, Kara hopes by her work on the train, delivering food, reading letters to the soldiers and carrying messages from one ward to another she might earn her Red Cross pin. Captain Stout is encouraging to Kara, but he warns her to follow the rules and not to administer emergency care to the patients.

Then in June their ambulance train is ordered very close to the front. Kara is not allowed to help stretcher wounded back to the train but is forced to wait for them to arrive. However, when an orderly breaks his ankle, Kara is allowed to fill in and partner with Corporal Bryant until a shell severely injures Bryant. Kara's quick thinking saves Bryant when they are caught in a poison gas attack. 

At a Casualty Clearing Station in Northern France, Kara makes the decision to sneak aboard the train an injured Austro-Hungarian soldier, Sergeant Baum who is seriously wounded. For disobeying the rules, Kara is forced to give up her apron and stop helping on the train. She is devastated but certain she has done the right thing. Sergeant Baum survives and tells her about his son Felix who is determined to become a soldier because of how badly he was treated by a Russian soldier. In thanksgiving for saving his life, he gives her his Austria war medal.

 

In December of 1915, during a visit to the town of Verdun, France, Kara and her mother meet Juliette, a refugee from Lille who is selling jewelry to buy food. Kara worries for Juliette because the rumours are that the Germans are coming to the town, which is considered a key location. She pays for Juliette's red hat but returns the hat because she can see the girl will need it during the cold days ahead.

Juliette Caron

February, 1916 and Juliette Caron, her younger brothers Marcel and Claude and her mother quickly pack some belongings in preparation for evacuating Verdun. Juliette and her family have already fled from their home in Lille but now as the Germans gain more territory they must flee Verdun too. They  are taking valuables to sell in the hopes of bribing the Germans to release Papa from prison in Lille. 

Because they take so long to pack, Juliette's family find themselves alone on the road out of Verdun and soon encounter the arriving German soldiers. When they surround their wagon, Juliette flees into the woods to safeguard their money. She becomes separated from her family and is forced to hide overnight. She is found half frozen and unconscious by an orderly from the hospital train that stopped outside of Verdun.

On the train she is helped by Kara who tells her that there are refugee camps throughout France, with lists of people who are lost. This will help Juliette be reunited with her family. Juliette decides to leave the train in March and head to Lille to try to get her father out of prison. However, in Lille things do not go according to plan: she has her money stolen by Monique, a girl who has taken her in, and her attempt to bribe Major Dressler fails. She and Monique are also captured by the Germans, along with many other French girls and forced to work on a local farm.

With Monique's help, Juliette escapes the farm but is captured by Major Dressler in July. He tells her that he has met with her father in prison and they have become friends. Acting on a promise he made to her father, Dressler escorts Juliette across German lines into French territory where she is reunited with Kara and the hospital train. Juliette is allowed to stay on the train for two months, helping in the kitchen and laundry. Major Stout has reconsidered and reinstates Kara, designating her as a "nurse-in-training". At this time Juliette decides to leave the train and search for her family around Verdun. She hopes her mother may have found refuge in a nearby cave.

In the trenches outside Verdun, Juliette finds much needed food and supplies, left behind by the retreating Germans. A search of devastated Verdun doesn't turn up her family and she returns to the caves. But one day  in December, 1916, while looking for firewood, Juliette sees a wounded soldier wandering through a minefield. She manages to lead him to safety and takes him to the caves.

Dimitri Petrenko

Fourteen-year-old Dimitri and his friend Igor Zolin are fighting alongside French soldiers. They have no weapons and are ordered by Captain Garinov to go out into no-man's-land to get one from a dead soldier. But as they are out, crawling along the ground, the Germans attack. Dimitri is knocked unconscious. When he awakens, he wanders off into a minefield where he is helped by a girl. When he awakens he finds himself being cared for by Juliette in a cave.

The talk about their families and what the war has done to their lives. Dimitri decides he will return to his unit to continue to fight for freedom especially after what he has seen in Europe. When it comes time for him to leave, Juliette gives him a haversack and her red knit hat. He also discovers that she has given him the Austrian war medal.

Back in the trenches, reunited with his friend Igor, Dimitri and the other soldiers are ordered by Captain Garinov over the top. It is April 1917 and during this battle Igor is killed by a grenade. After the battle the Russian soldiers learn that the Tsar has abdicated and the revolution in Russia has begun. They refuse to fight and after a confrontation with the French Commandant LeBlanc, leave the war. Dimitri doesn't follow Garinov and the other soldiers as he supports the Tsar. However, he finds himself a prisoner of war when he is captured by the few German soldiers who survive the destruction of their trench.

Dimitri finds himself in a prison camp in Freiburg, Germany and after five months is sent to work on Major Dressler's home. It is November, 1917. At the Dressler home, Dimitri discovers his enemy, Captain Garinov is also a prisoner. When Garinov discovers Dimitri has an Austro-Hungarian medal, he tells Elsa that Dimitri has stolen it. Elsa tells him that the medal belongs to the father of a boy named Felix. Dimitri tells her that he was given the medal by a British girl on a hospital train. When Elsa tells her father what happened, instead of punishing Dimitri, he arranges for him to be driven to the French border and to safety. He tells Dimitri not to return to Russia because of the revolution but instead to go to Verdun, to Belleray where he will be able to get a job with an old friend of Dressler. In Belleray, Dimitri is hired to work at Dressler's friends market. And it is there that he meets the mother of a girl he knows is searching for her family.

Elsa Dressler

It is now April of 1918 and it's evident that Germany is losing the war. The people of Germany and starving and Elsa and her family are also struggling. Their neighbours are blaming her father who told them the war would bring glory to Germany.  They want a new government but the type of country they want, Major Dressler does not want to be a part of because they "...want a Germany of pure-blood Germans only..." While he is away, he tells Elsa they must focus on working in their garden so they will have the food they need.

At the market, Elsa spies Garinov, the Russian captain who ran off with their horse. Scared he might harm them, Elsa's mother writes to her father for direction. Meanwhile they receive a letter from Felix Baum asking to visit them in Freiburg. Conditions continue to deteriorate as Elsa and her family run out of food rations and are unable to sell any of their valuables to buy food. By November of 1918, Dressler writes to tell them that Germany is asking for peace. He also indicates that he will return home after he is released from the army and they will make plans to leave Germany. However, Major Dressler is attacked and seriously injured near Belleray by angry Germans. To help him, Elsa will need the help of many people.

 

Discussion

Lines of Courage attempts to portray the far-reaching effects of World War I on English, French, German and Russian civilians and soldiers through the stories of five teens. World War I had its beginnings with the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Austro-Hungary throne, and his wife Sophie in September of 1914. The resulting war would draw in many countries in the world, beginning with Austria-Hungary and Serbia, and radiating out to their allies including Britain and its colonies, France, Germany, and Russia.

Nielsen breaks her story up based on her five fictional characters from these countries: Felix Baum from Lemberg (now Lviv, Ukraine), Kara Webb from England, Juliette Caron from Lille, France, Dimitri Petrenko from Russia and Elsa Dressler from Germany. Although they begin the war in very separate places, their paths crisscross, ultimately converging at the end of the novel. They are brought together by a series of circumstances, ultimately connected by deliberate acts of courage.

The line of courage is represented by the Golden Cross of Merit, Felix Baum's father attempts to give him at the beginning of the novel. However, Felix refuses his father's offer, telling him, "I won't accept what I haven't earned." So Sergeant Baum keeps it with him until his life is saved by the courageous action of Kara Webb who disobeys orders and loads the seriously wounded Baum onto the hospital train. This results in Kara losing her job of helping on the train. Baum recognizes the risks Kara took and gives her the medal. He tells her "...perhaps one day you can share this medal with someone else. I like to think that it will become part of a journey that inspires courage in others."

When Juliette Caron is rescued, nearly frozen, Kara helps her calm down and figure out what she needs to do next. To help her get her father out of prison in Lille, Kara gives her the Golden Cross of Merit to use as part of a bribe. This plan fails and after many events, Kara finds herself in the caves outside Verdun. It is there that she courageously rescues Russian, Dimitri Petrenko, who is wounded and not aware he is walking through a mine field. She has now earned the medal. But when Dimitri tells her he must return to the war so that he can earn a medal that will make a better life possible for his family in Russia, Juliette passes the medal onto Dimitri. The medal is then taken from Dimitri when he is a prisoner of war by Captain Garinov, who insists that Dimitri has stolen it. Once Major Dressler learns the truth about the medal, he accepts it from Dimitri whom he sets free as an act of kindness, recognizing that he is too young to be a soldier.

With the medal in his possession, Dressler returns to Lille to help free Juliette Caron's father as well as many of the other prisoners. However, with the war almost over, Elsa's father, Major Dressler is seriously wounded by fellow German soldiers. With the help of Elsa, Felix, Dimitri and Juliette, and Captain Garinov, Major Dressler is taken to the hospital train where Kara works. The medal has come full circle. In the end we learn that Felix has earned his own medal for bravery. Major Dressler tells them that each has earned it in their own way. "This medal belongs to every one of you. At some point, each of you found yourself in a terrible situation, and you responded with courage, with honor, and with kindness. Through your examples, you saved me." 

Nielson packs much information about the war and fighting into the novel through her characters. For example, Sergeant Baum attempts to explain to Kara what the fighting is really like and later in the novel readers are presented with the utter destruction that occurred during the war in Verdun when Juliette returns to try to find her home:
"...Most of the few buildings still standing looked ready to topple over with the next gust of wind. Half of them had at least one wall stripped away. Any memories that might have been preserved for the families who'd lived there once were now open for anyone to view, or they had been long ago scattered about.....
At last she turned onto a road that was familiar. There, not far ahead, stood a house that she recognized, left nearly intact. Her home would be across the road and thirty steps down.
Yet thirty steps later, she stood facing a pile of rubble, rocks and plaster and brick jumbled up with items she vaguely recognized as having belonged to her family once.
This could not have been her home, not this terrible pile of broken dreams. But it was."

 

Lines of Courage does capture some of the reality of life during the Great War; - the devastation from years of shelling and gas, the terror of battle for the soldiers, the displacement of refugees and the fragility of their existence in countries torn apart by war, the fear and mistrust people from one nation had for people from other nations, the futility of war. The end of the war is also shown to be a time of upheaval with references to the revolution in Russia and the murder of the Tsar and his family, of the coming of the Spanish Flu which Elsa's mother contracted, and the discontent and anger in Germany over losing the war and the foreshadowing of an even worse time to come. 

There is a detailed Author's Note at the back with information on the assassination of Franz Ferdinand, the Red Cross trains, trench warfare, the Battle of Verdun, the Russian Revolution, the Weimar Republic and the impact of World War I. 

Lines of Courage is another outstanding novel by Jennifer Nielsen. Informative, engaging and realistic is it's portrayal of war and its impacts on soldiers and civilians alike.

Book Details:

Lines of Courage by Jennifer A. Nielsen
New York: Scholastic Press      2022
388 pp.