Episode 81- Break

Five members of Maura Whitfield’s family are already serving in France when her fifteen-year-old daughter, Estelle, announces that she wants to join them, not as a soldier, but as a nurse.Maura refuses.Desperate to contribute to the war effort, Estelle is offered an alternative. She can remain safely in London while helping produce the shells and ammunition desperately needed by British soldiers overseas.For Maura, it seems like the perfect compromise.Her daughter can serve her country.She can help bring her father and brothers home.And, most importantly, she will be safe.

May 19th, 1915. Gallipoli.Seventeen-year-old Ottoman soldier Fatih survives a disastrous assault against the ANZAC lines. His older brother Yusef does not return.For four days, Fatih searches the trenches, the wounded, and every group of survivors he can find. But there is one place he cannot search: the deadly stretch of ground between the opposing armies.Then an extraordinary agreement is reached.For a few hours, the guns will fall silent. Soldiers from both sides will enter No Man's Land, not to fight, but to bury the thousands of men left behind.While everyone else searches for the dead, Fatih searches for someone he refuses to believe is among them.

On a lonely stretch of the Icelandic coast, former merchant seaman Einar Bjornsson begins a new life as a lighthouse keeper.His predecessor tells him of the strange beauty of the sea at night. Of stars that seem to leave the heavens and rest upon the water before disappearing again.At first, Einar thinks little of the old man's stories.Then he begins seeing the stars himself.Night after night, strange lights appear beyond the horizon. They move. They gather. And then, without explanation, they disappear.With a war raging beyond Iceland's shores, Einar begins to wonder if what he's watching is really as innocent as it appears.

As the Spanish flu ravages Europe, America continues to hold massive parades to raise money for the war effort.Treasury official Tom Mercer believes the Fourth Liberty Loan Parade is essential to supporting the American soldiers fighting in France. But when a medical expert warns him that the deadly influenza has already reached Philadelphia, Tom refuses to believe it.As the parade becomes a resounding success, Tom and his wife Judith travel to France to witness firsthand how Liberty Loan funds are helping the Allied war effort. What awaits them across the Atlantic, however, will force Tom to confront a heartbreaking truth:Every victory comes at a price.

Thirteen-year-old Elena Petrescu and her younger brothers, Luca and Adrian, are among thousands fleeing the fighting near Romania’s border with Austria-Hungary.Then a shell strikes their refugee column.Their parents are killed, the survivors are scattered and the three children are left alone with nothing but the clothes they are wearing.Their only hope is their grandfather in Bucharest.With enemy armies advancing into Romania, Elena must lead her brothers across a country at war. They sleep in barns, search for food and learn quickly that survival sometimes requires doing things they never imagined.After two weeks on the road, they finally reach Bucharest and begin to build a new life.A different kind of normal.But the war is still coming.

When Ernst Falk enlisted in the Imperial German Army Air Service, he believed his role was simple: photograph the battlefield, map enemy positions, and provide the intelligence that would save German lives. He never imagined he would be ordered to become a killer.As aerial warfare evolves, Ernst finds himself caught between military obedience and personal conviction. His refusal to follow orders places him on a collision course with a ruthless colonel determined to make an example of him. What follows is a story of conscience, punishment, and one final chance at freedom as Germany's fortunes collapse in the closing weeks of the First World War.

In 1917, as America prepares to enter the First World War, Colonel Nathaniel Ward Hale is asked to brief General John J. Pershing and his senior staff on the realities of modern warfare.What begins as a discussion about troop readiness and logistics quickly becomes something far darker as Hale attempts to explain the horrifying truth of the Western Front; a battlefield where artillery, machine guns, gas and industrialized warfare consume men by the thousands.As pressure mounts from the French and British for immediate American reinforcements, Pershing and his officers are forced to confront impossible questions:How do you prepare boys for a battlefield designed to destroy them?And how many lives are acceptable to lose in the process?A story about logistics, sacrifice and the terrifying machinery of modern war.

Part III and Conclusion of the Faces Of Empire Trilogy:A wounded survivor of the Somme returns home to challenge a Member of Parliament who has ruled unopposed for nearly thirty years.As Dexter Keenan campaigns across industrial England, he finds himself caught between love, politics, and the growing realization that the British Empire may not be the force for good he once believed it to be.Joined once again by Belgian sculptor Margot Weiss and influenced by a Māori officer struggling with the loss of his own cultural identity, Dexter begins questioning not only the war… but the Empire itself.

Part II of the Faces Of Empire Trilogy: Far from the trenches of Europe, Hemi Pōmare finds himself caught between two worlds.A proud Māori soldier serving the British Crown, Hemi is assigned as aide to powerful Member of Parliament Jasper Derry during the occupation of Samoa in the opening days of the First World War.But when Hemi witnesses the suppression of Samoan customs and traditions, he begins to question the very empire his family has served for generations.

Part I of the Faces Of Empire Trilogy:A young Belgian sculptor leaves home to chase her dream of becoming an artist.But after arriving in Switzerland during the First World War, she is recruited into a quiet medical effort dedicated to restoring the faces of soldiers disfigured by artillery and trench warfare.As Margot learns to rebuild what the war has taken, an unexpected connection with one wounded soldier begins to change them both.