The First Word War
World War I
The War to End All Wars
Or, for anyone unsure as to what an oxymoron is,
The Great War
I make no comment here on the obscenity and utter futility of the trench warfare of this ill-begotten and brutally mismanaged conflict.
Or the politics behind the mass slaughter of almost an entire generation of young working class men.
This is one small cemetery out of around 940 in France and Belgium.
It contains the graves of 1262 British, 4 Canadian and 29 German soldiers and airmen.
There is no segregation by rank or nationality, and each grave is immaculately tended.
There are many many books on this conflict
I recommend two, on a purely personal basis.
Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks, an English novelist, is a beautifully written tale of trench warfare and is among the handful of books I consider to be the best I have ever read.
Sunset Song by Lewis Grassic Gibbon was recently voted the best Scottish book of all time.
While it is less directly focused on the war, it describes the impact it had on the lives of the people in a Scottish crofting community.
Thank you.
anelephantcant 
I think on these things often, my father born in post war Germany…brutal tales and the scars of it, really, carry many generations down, if those generations are told and shown the horrors of war. I hate it. Thank you for sharing this too. It is so very important.
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I think you summed things up quite clearly and accurately my friend. It is however a nice feeling to know that those that tend these memorials have not forgotten and do care. It is something at least.
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