Described (by George Will, as I recall) as "Young men trying to wear out machine guns with their chests".
"The Great War.
Described (by George Will, as I recall) as "Young men trying to wear out machine guns with their chests".
I had a great uncle who was a Canadian cavalry officer in WWI. He once described to me the effects of machinegun fire on the first and only cavalry charge he participated in during the war. He said they were cut to ribbons and to the day he died at nearly ninety he wondered how he had ever survived. Another great uncle came home in 1919 to die from having been gassed and lived another 66 years. He wouldn't talk about the war until one day in the 1960s I was home from school sitting in his kitchen with him when he started to talk...and talk and talk, about the Marne River running red with blood and the fellow next to him in a battle being vaporized and him not getting a scratch. Other uncles and a grandfather had similar stories, in fact my grandfather carried pieces of German shrapnel with him to his grave. It was a horrible war whose effects are still felt in Europe and by extension the whole world to this day.
A friend of mine's Grandfather was in the US Army during WWI. The Grandfather had a picture of his company taken at their graduation of basic training which he gave to my friend. When he presented my friend the framed picture, he said, "That's me there, and that other fellow here is the other guy that survived the war." Out of a company of nearly 200 young men, 2 survived.
WWI is a war that should have never been fought. It is a war that will go down in history as an absolutely tragic waste of humanity and a predecessor to a worse tragedy. Because of the stupid mistakes before, during, and after WWI, WWII became a war that had to be won at any cost.
Typically, no lessons were learned from the aftermath of WWI and Stalin was allowed to spread his insane reign of terror past the borders of Russia to Eastern Europe, the Baltic States, and eventually Korea and Viet Nam.
I've come to the conclusion that anyone wanting to be a politician should have at least a masters degree in world history.