Lines of Courage

Kara Webb begins the novel as a 14-year-old British girl who lives with her mother in a small fishing town. She admires her mother, who is a nurse, and wishes more than anything to become one: “In many ways, Kara felt that she had been waiting her entire life for an opportunity [to be a nurse]. While other girls knitted socks for the soldiers, Kara made bandages. They read Sketch magazine for fashion advice. She read her mother’s old medical books” (69). In addition, Kara is driven by her desire to honor her father’s memory, who died heroically the previous year while saving people from a ship that was hit by a German torpedo.

When her mother is offered a job on one of the Red Cross ambulance trains, Kara is elated. She convinces her mother to accept the position and take her along to work as an orderly, stating: “I’m not afraid of doing hard things. I’m afraid of a life where I do nothing!” (67). Though Kara soon realizes that the work is more difficult and gruesome than she imagined, she rises to the challenge and gradually gains more maturity and confidence.

Kara, initially portrayed as brave for her resolve in the face of catastrophe, exhibits further courage when she disobeys orders to save the wounded enemy Sergeant Baum. Her heroism is punished by the Red Cross, but rewarded when Sergeant Baum gives her his Golden Cross of Merit, the universal signifier of bravery in the text. Kara continues to be a savior in the book, first to Juliette and finally to Major Dressler. Nielsen also chooses her as the character to announce the end of the war, emphasizing her role as a healer in the text. At the end of the novel, after Kara successfully saves Major Dressler’s life, she is reinstated as a nurse-in-training and plans to become one of the first female doctors.

Juliette Caron, described as “a pretty girl with light brown hair who might’ve been only a year or two younger than Kara” (122), is a French girl from Lille who relocates to Verdun with her mother and brothers after her father is imprisoned by the Germans. Juliette is characterized as smart and resilient. She is a symbol of unity throughout the text; while trying to free her father and find her mother and brothers to unite her family, she unites several other disparate characters along the way. She does so in part by generously offering her Red Knitted Hat, originally gifted to her by her father.

Her generosity and willingness to cooperate with others eventually lead her to her family, though she must endure many setbacks. She represents the importance of not losing hope, and her perseverance is rewarded with the reunification of her family, and friendships with Kara and Dimitri along the way.

Dimitri Petrenko is a 14-year-old Russian boy who is forced into the Russian army only to financially benefit his family. Dimitri represents the escapist spirit of freedom and the perspective of someone with little loyalty to any country in the war. He does not fight for patriotism, but for money to pay for his family’s freedom. When the Tsar is deposed, he switches sides to the French army before striking up a friendship with Elsa and Major Dressler, who are high-up in the German army. To him, even Lenin’s Red Star represents nothing more than his friendship with Igor and, later when he offers it to him, a symbol of goodwill and friendship toward Captain Garinov.

In the trenches, he dreams of freedom by looking up at the sky and contemplating the insignificance of the war from a great height, visualizing the trenches as insignificant given the vastness of the universe.

Dimitri is the last of the protagonists to be introduced, and through him, Nielsen is able to more immediately depict the horrors of a WWI battlefield. The violence and trauma Dimitri endures sets up the cathartic resolution brought by his freedom and eventual peace at the end of the novel.