The Crummy War of Henrietta Eloise Parsons Age Nine

It’s 1916 and nine year old Henrietta Eloise Parsons is sick of war. They said it was The Great War, The War to End All Wars, as if it was an event like the Olympic Games, with parades, medals and ribbons. As far as she is concerned, it’s a crummy war. It’s just like a schoolyard brawl where all the boys join in, with torn shirts, bloody noses and filthy uniforms from rolling in the dirt, then, when they’re lined up in the principal’s office none of them can remember why they were fighting or what stupid thing started the whole mess. On the other side of the world German Zeppelins are reigning terror on London streets at night. One of Henrietta’s English cousins has been killed fleeing to an air raid shelter. Her parents have decided that Henrietta will leave Sydney and spend the duration of The Great War up in the country with her grandparents.

It’s bad enough to be an only child named after a paternal great-grandfather, Henry Parsons, a circumstance that draws humiliation and teasing at school, but to be sent to the country with her mother’s maid, Daisy is enough to push Henrietta to the end of her notoriously puny patience. Her father, a senior editor at the Sunday Herald is hardly ever seen without a newspaper in front of his frowning face, and Mother has suddenly taken an interest in activities she haughtily refers to as The War Effort. As far as Henrietta can see, this involves a lot of high teas, committees about cake and how to motivate housewives to knit socks for soldiers and make care packages for the troops. But go she must. To a small country town where nothing is as she expected.