Which side was East Mythosmoa on during the Great War?

When reading the modern history of East Mythosmoa, it is surprisingly difficult to find a simple answer to the question, "Which side was East Mythosmoa on during the Great War?" Post-war textbooks emphasize that soldiers from East Mythosmoa fought against the invading forces and suffered many casualties in battles such as the Battle of Seren Valley. In that sense, when the Great War is discussed in present-day East Mythosmoa, the fundamental understanding is that their country was invaded and was on the side that resisted. However, East Mythosmoa at that time was not in a position to determine its own foreign policy as an independent nation like it is today. Neither the military uniforms, the military flags, nor the headquarters from which the soldiers received their orders belonged to an independent government based in Sudra.

Therefore, asking "which side they were on" is a bit like projecting current national borders too far into the past. The people of East Mythosmoa certainly fought as soldiers for one of the camps. However, the country of East Mythosmoa did not choose that camp. This distinction has made the memory of the Great War complex to this day.

When the Great War began, East Mythosmoa was not an independent country

The large nation that entered after the kingdom disappeared

In present-day East Mythosmoa, records regarding Nordina Castle in Melesh and the former royal family remain, so it feels as though the nation has been continuous from the old kingdom to the current republic. However, there is a major rupture between those periods. After the monarchy ended, East Mythosmoa went through a brief period of political chaos before being incorporated as a region of a federal state with vast territories in the east. Although an agency responsible for regional administration was established in Sudra, foreign affairs, military matters, and major industrial policies were decided by a distant central authority, and East Mythosmoa had no authority to form alliances with other countries or declare war on its own.

Looking at official documents from this era, the name East Mythosmoa did not disappear. It was used as a regional name and remained in schools and administrative divisions. However, in military-related documents, the name of the larger nation was recorded as the affiliation, with places of origin such as Sudra, Melesh, or Lyeda added below it. People who, by today's sensibilities, one would want to call "East Mythosmoan soldiers" were at the time incorporated into a much larger military. To consider their position during the Great War, one must first understand this state of affairs.

There is no "day they entered the war"

If it were an independent country, the government could decide to declare war, the parliament could approve it, and there would be a day to announce it to the citizens. However, East Mythosmoa has no unique date that can be called its "entry into the war." When the entire large nation entered the war, mobilization orders reached Sudra, and local administrative agencies gathered those subject to the draft. Reporting locations were posted on town bulletin boards, more young people than usual gathered at railway stations, and soldiers were sent from the provinces via Trem and Sudra.

In other words, East Mythosmoa did not participate in the war because its government made a diplomatic decision; rather, because the nation it already belonged to entered the war, it was drawn into the battlefield from within. If you color-code the camps on a map from later years, the territory of East Mythosmoa is clearly painted in one color. However, that color does not necessarily represent the political will of the people.

The east was not the first to become a battlefield

The invasion came from outside the mountains

The Great War directly changed the daily life of East Mythosmoa not through reports from distant fronts, but when the military entered from the outside. The invading forces did not attempt to cross the Halvart Mountains head-on in a large-scale manner, but instead advanced using relatively easy-to-traverse flatlands and existing roads. Valen Port and the main railways had high military value, and Sudra also became an important target for controlling administration and transportation. On the other hand, some of the small villages in the Lyeda Basin were relatively spared from direct combat because there was little strategic gain in moving large units there, and the roads were scattered.

During this period in East Mythosmoa, the war was no longer something "being defended at the border." Road signs were removed, the condition of bridges was checked, and livestock and food were moved to settlements further up in the mountains. As the invading forces approached, some government offices burned their administrative documents, while other towns hid only their land ledgers and resident registries. What was left behind and what was erased varied by region, and the difference in those decisions has greatly influenced the amount of records available in later years.

The Battle of Seren Valley

East Mythosmoa's greatest war memory

If one were to name a single place that symbolizes the Great War in present-day East Mythosmoa, it would be Seren Valley, not Sudra. In the Battle of Seren Valley, fierce fighting continued over the roads passing through the valley and the surrounding highlands to delay the advance of the invading forces. Units containing many people from East Mythosmoa were also deployed here, and today the name of Seren appears repeatedly in the war dead registries of various regions.

However, if you only look at the current monuments, it is easy to understand it as "a battle where the East Mythosmoan army defended its homeland." In reality, the chain of command belonged to a larger military organization, and units were not composed solely of people from East Mythosmoa. There were many soldiers from other regions, and conversely, there were cases where soldiers from East Mythosmoa were fighting on distant fronts. Seren Valley came to be remembered as "the battle of East Mythosmoa" because the battlefield was within the current national territory and the residents of the towns and villages experienced the fighting directly.

Defeat and retreat are also remembered

What is interesting about Seren Valley is that it is not only the heroic defensive battle that is talked about. Regional materials also record that the initial defensive line collapsed, that units retreated, that the wounded could not be fully evacuated, and that the destruction of bridges was delayed and they were used by the invading forces. For a while after the war, there was a tendency for such records to be excluded from the official narrative, but in current regional museums, exhibits now include retreat routes and civilian evacuation routes.

For East Mythosmoa, the Great War cannot be explained by a single sentence stating that they belonged to the winning side. This is because the final result of the war as a whole and the sequence of events that actually occurred in various parts of East Mythosmoa do not align. What the people experienced first was not victory, but mobilization, retreat, occupation, and shortages of goods.

Sudra was once placed under a different flag

The occupation period when even street names were changed

When Sudra was occupied, some administrative agencies were requisitioned, and the names of streets and public facility signs were changed. Even today, if you examine old buildings, you can sometimes find traces of letters stripped from walls or maps marked with different names. While many streets returned to their original names after the war, not everything was restored, and some names currently in use are third names that differ from both the pre-occupation and occupation periods.

Local people were also mobilized for the occupation administration. This was because it was impossible to carry out all daily tasks such as food distribution, cleaning, railway operations, and resident registration using only personnel from outside. This fact became a difficult issue to handle in East Mythosmoore for a long time after the war. If everyone who worked under the occupation administration is considered a collaborator, then even those who worked to maintain the town's life fall into the same category. Conversely, if it is explained as just a job, the difference between them and those who actually actively cooperated with the occupying side becomes invisible.

There was a 'this side' and 'that side' even within the town

If you think of the Great War only in terms of two camps, life under occupation is difficult to understand. Among the residents who remained in Sudra, some participated in underground activities, some continued their jobs in the occupation administration to support their families, and some tried to keep their distance from politics. Even if they felt antipathy toward the invading army, they had to go to the distribution centers to get food. Railway workers operated trains used by the occupying side while simultaneously supporting the movement of residents.

In present-day East Mythosmoore, explanations that simply divide this period into 'those who cooperated' and 'those who resisted' are less common than before. Of course, war crimes and active collaboration are distinguished, but there is caution against easily judging acts that maintained daily life in an occupied town from a safe place in later generations. During the Great War, the front lines moved across the land, but people's positions were not as clear as a single map.

People who went into the mountains

The Halvart Mountains were not outside the front lines

After the invasion, there were small resistance organizations that moved to the Halvart Mountains. While there were no railways in the mountains, making it difficult to continuously send large units, roads including the Bernov Pass and Velka Pass were important for movement between regions. Therefore, the resistance side focused on checking road conditions, moving liaison officers, and monitoring the occupying side's transport rather than controlling the mountains themselves.

However, it was not free just because they went into the mountains. In winter, the roads that could be traveled were limited, and food could not be secured in the mountains alone. In the end, a relationship with the villages at the foot of the mountains was necessary. There were cases where residents gave bread or dried meat, and there were houses that did not get involved for fear of retaliation. In stories that beautifully depict mountain resistance activities for later generations, this part is easily omitted, but in reality, hiding one person could mean danger for the entire village.

Villages in the Lyeda Basin

Even the villages in the Lyeda Basin that avoided direct combat were not unrelated to the war. Young people were mobilized, livestock and grain were requisitioned, and refugees arrived from afar. Some villages removed road signs, stopped ringing bells, and kept lights from being seen from the outside at night. The fact that no large-scale battles occurred is not the same as being peaceful.

After the war, subtle emotions also arose between regions that suffered many war dead, such as the Seren Valley, and basin villages where buildings relatively remained. The reason some people disliked being called a 'village where nothing happened' was because the fact that it did not become a battlefield was accompanied by a sense of guilt for having escaped and memories that were difficult to explain.

In the latter half of the war, the army returned

Memories called 'liberation'

As the war situation changed, the large army including East Mythosmoore advanced west again and recaptured the occupied territory. On Sudra's postwar monuments, this event has long been described as 'liberation.' In the sense that the occupying army withdrew and the forced rule ended, it was indeed a liberation for the residents. People who had been interned returned, the signs that had been changed were removed, and the administrative functions that had been evacuated were re-established.

Photos of people welcoming the soldiers also remain in the town. Women handing over flowers, children running beside vehicles, people taking old flags out of buildings. If you look only at those photos, the stance of the war looks very clear. There was the side that invaded and the side that drove them out, and East Mythosmoore was the latter.

However, the history of East Mythosmoore does not end there.

The army that returned was both 'our own army' and 'a foreign army'

Many of the soldiers who drove out the occupying forces were from East Mythosmoa. For their families, this meant their sons and brothers had returned. On the other hand, the supreme command of that army was not in Sudra, and the post-war political system could not be decided by East Mythosmoa alone. For the residents, the returning army was both the force that saved them from occupation and the army of a massive state that encompassed East Mythosmoa.

This is the most difficult part of the current memory of the Great War. There is no need to deny the liberation from occupation. However, one cannot assume that just because they were 'liberated,' all the residents freely chose the subsequent political system. Both are true simultaneously. East Mythosmoa was liberated from the invading forces, yet it remained within a state structure where it could not fully determine its own diplomacy or military affairs.

Where did the soldiers from East Mythosmoa fight?

It did not end with national defense alone

Even after the invading forces withdrew from East Mythosmoa, the war for the soldiers from East Mythosmoa did not end. The units advanced further west and fought in regions far from the current borders. In the cemeteries, one can sometimes find foreign place names that are unfamiliar to the people of East Mythosmoa, rather than the Seren Valley or Sudra.

This fact is also important when considering the stance during the Great War. In the first half of the war, the soldiers were clearly fighting to stop the invasion of their homeland. However, after reclaiming their territory, they continued to fight for larger military objectives. The question of 'how far was it national defense?' has been debated repeatedly from the post-war period to the present.

Even so, in the letters left to many families, there is more talk of returning home than political explanations. I think I can return when the snow melts, please ask my younger brother to take care of the fields, please tell mother not to throw away my shoes. For the soldiers from East Mythosmoa, the war between massive states and the small town they wanted to return to were written on the same piece of paper.

After the war, the narrative of victory was organized

Monuments of the same shape were built in every town

In post-war East Mythosmoa, monuments commemorating the war dead were built in various places. There are stone monuments with names inscribed not only in the large memorial facilities in Sudra, but also in Melesh, Kradil, the towns of the Drava Valley, and the villages of the Ljeda Basin. Although there are regional differences in design, the earlier ones have many common features, indicating that they were not designed with only East Mythosmoa in mind. Common vocabulary such as 'homeland,' 'liberation,' and 'victory' was repeated in the inscriptions, and their position within the massive war was brought to the fore rather than individual regional histories.

That was not a falsehood. Many people actually fought, ended the occupation, and paid a huge sacrifice. However, in the process of organizing public memory, the chaos of the retreat, soldiers who became prisoners of war, people who survived under occupation, and politically inconvenient resistance organizations became difficult to talk about. When the war ended, the complex positions of the people were subsumed into one grand narrative of 'the residents of the victorious side.'

The inscriptions were not erased after independence

Later, when East Mythosmoa became independent, there was a debate about whether these monuments should be removed. However, many were left standing. This was because the political system the monuments symbolized and the deaths of the East Mythosmoan soldiers inscribed on them could not be treated as the same thing.

For some monuments, new explanatory plaques were added. This method involves not erasing the original inscription, but instead noting the military organization at the time, the progress of the occupation, and the number of mobilized people from the region next to it. It was not about believing in the old monuments as they were, nor about erasing them and replacing them with a new history, but about placing a different text alongside them. It was one of the methods East Mythosmoa chose when retelling the Great War.

If asked 'which side were you on?'

If you were to ask a current history teacher in East Mythosmoa, they would first answer, 'We were not on the side that invaded, but on the side that fought against it.' That in itself is not wrong. In the Seren Valley, they fought against the invading forces, and Sudra was occupied and later recaptured. The soldiers from East Mythosmoa fought as members of the army of the camp that ultimately won.

However, one more sentence is needed after that.

'However, East Mythosmoa did not choose that camp as an independent nation.'

During the Great War, East Mythosmoa was part of a vast federal state. Both military and diplomatic affairs were decided centrally, and the young people of East Mythosmoa were mobilized as soldiers of that state. The experience of having their territory invaded was real, and resisting it was also real. On the other hand, the political system that returned after the war cannot be simply equated with the current independent state.

At first, I thought that the question of 'which side were you on during the Great War' could be answered by looking at a single map. However, in the case of East Mythosmoa, the colors painted on the map indicate military affiliation, but they do not show how the people thought of themselves.

In Meresh, there was a generation that remembered the kingdom; in Sudra, administrative documents in a different language increased, and young people boarded trains under orders from a distant headquarters. Later, a different army entered from the outside, town signs were changed, and a few years after that, the first army returned. The same people experienced all of it.

That is why the history of the Great War in East Mythosmore retains both the words "we won" and the feeling that "it was not a war we decided on."

The soldiers carved into the monument in the Seren Valley were certainly on the side that resisted the invasion. However, what they were trying to protect cannot be explained solely by the borders of a massive nation. When you include the feeling of not wanting to lose the village where their families lived, the bridge they always crossed, the streets of Sudra, the fields of the Ryeda Basin, and the road leading to Meresh, the question of "which side they were on" finally becomes something a bit more concrete than just the name of a camp.

During the Great War, East Mythosmore belonged to the winning side. However, it was not a side that an independent East Mythosmore had chosen for itself. And not forgetting that difference is still important when talking about the Great War in this country today.