I’m fascinated by World War I. The whole idea of Trench Warfare and the horrible conditions the troops endured just fascinates the hell out of me. Not to say that it’s bad, but World War I is often overshadowed by the just as horrific World War II. World War I shaped the face of modern warfare. So many innovations came out of it, for better or worse. The machine gun, artillery fire, the flame thrower, the airplane, the tank, gas, all courtesy of World War I. Heck, aviation technology alone jumped ahead thirty years in only a few. The thing that gets me though is the mental toll and anguish it took on the common soldier fighting simply to stay alive with all these heinous devices making their lives constant hell. They suffered through constant artillery barrages that simply devastated the country side. A single fragment from a large artillery shell whipping through the air could cut through twenty men no problem. It was a sad time. A time of slaughter. A time when the old style of warfare hadn’t quite caught up with the new. Despite, having weapons such as the machine gun that could mow down hundreds of men alone, they still clung to the old methods of fighting, at first. There still had Napoleonic Charges, in which they would try to overtake the enemy by sheer numbers. This was suicide. My old Professor once said that one machine gun nest, had the supreme firing power of an entire regiment in the Civil War. And these poor men would simply charge straight into the heart of one. That is why ONE day during the Battle of the Somme the British had 58,000 casualties. 58,000 casualties. It’s hard to fathom. The war was simply catastrophic and is a big reason today why America is the powerhouse that it is. This being because the European Nations were so decimated by the onslaught of four years of attrition and brutal fighting that America simply stepped in as the dominating powerhouse. Did you know that during the War the Russian Army was NEVER issued gas masks? It’s horrific. The living conditions alone for the common soldier would be enough to make me go A-WOL. They endured lice and rats. Rats as big as cats that would feast on the dead. They had awful Medieval looking clubs and weapons of all sorts, when it came down to hand to hand fighting. Weapons, such as clubs with nails driven through them, with the sole purpose of swinging it alongside another man’s head. Over ten million soldiers died in the conflict. It’s a damn shame. I suggest reading “All Quiet on the Western Front�, which is a good book, but if you want to read a “Memoir� on the horrors of the war read “The Storm of Steel� by Ernest Junger. You have to appreciate the significance of World War I, because it was the staging point for war that would hit Europe again only twenty years later.