I still prefer "The Great War" as a title for it.
It truly was a depressing war. Crazy to think that no one saw how poorly everyone was fighting.
Trench warfare consisted of miles of trenches opposite each other, and every now and then hundreds of men stand up and walk towards the line of machine guns and rifles as they fire.
And then several hours later, the opposite side did the same. Rinse and repeat.
And to top it all off, after the war had ended and 30 odd million people had died, civilians and soldiers.
And then not long after, Spanish Flu killed 50-100 million more. About 4-8% of the world population died within 6 years of war and disease.
Looking at pictures of war wounds is unfailingly horrifying. Lower jaws blown off, Upper jaws blown off, faces torn to sheds and sown together with cloth sutures, aputations of the lower arm, lower leg, groin, foot, hand, both legs, both arms, all limbs. What makes it worse is the primitive medical technology- cauterizations with hot irons, terrible needlework, flaps of flesh sowed onto the face to prepare it for cosmetic surgery, iron bars being crudely fitted as lower jaws...
Truly one of the worst wars in human history. What makes it worse is that, unlike other wars before it, most of the casualties in this war were not from starvation, or disease, or weather, but by humans themselves.
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