One of the worst wars ever fought. Beautifully told in the enchanting play “War Horse.”
There are two great books that tell the story from the standpoint of men in the trenches. The first is “Poilu” by Louis Barthas, who served in the French army from 1914 to 1918, spending most of his time as an enlisted man in front line units. The other is, “Goodbye to all That” by Robert Graves, who served as a junior officer in front line British units for much of the war. Both present a picture of unbridled, futile horror. Barthas’ book is currently available at Amazon; Graves’ is not. I highly recommend both.
Hello Miss Marmelstein. Hows life in The Big Apple? Yes WW1 was horrific. It was a war fought on the cusp between two eras, the Napoleonic,in the philosophic it was the idea that if ones cause was right and just the Lord God would give you victory. Militarily you pretty much lined up facing your enemy and ‘’banged away’’(shot) at each other. It was also the first war fought with weapons of the Industrial Age. Long range big caliber artillery, airplanes, the Devils brew of poison gas, all of which didn’t give a fig about righteousness and whose side The Almighty favored. And it was fought with the machine gun. No other weapon in the 20th. century so changed the nature of war itself but the very idea of going to war at all. Time and again the opposing sides lined up rank on rank and charged each other and time and again the machine gun mowed them down ‘’like summer wheat’’. Hence the creation of those God-awful trenches. My late grandfather served with The American Expeditionary Force(the A.E.F, as it was called) He was wounded twice, once by that awful gas. He never spoke of the horrors he saw.