100 Years ago this month the world descended into insanity.
For four years, millions of men sat in misery in rat infested, waterlogged trenches enduring artillery bombardments, sniper fire, gas attacks which destroyed their eyes and lungs, sometimes from their own side; then emerging over the top to walk into body shredding machine gun fire to gain a few yards of blood drenched mud.
At sea the dangerous life of the merchant seaman became even more of a deadly gamble as the ships in which they sailed became targets to deprive the participants of war materials as well as food for the civilian populations.
In the air, men flew planes made from cloth, paper and wood to attack each other and launched the first aerial attacks on ground troops using hand grenades.
The outbreak of the war is described in many ways, often depending on the national and political views of the observer. It can be described as the most obscene family quarrel with the Royal families of Britain, Russia and Germany all descendants of Queen Victoria and intertwined in an almost incestuous way being closely related to each other as well as to most of the crowned heads of Europe. Lenin described it as a capitalist war while others as an attempt by Germany to break into the colonial closed shop dominated by Britain and France but included the Netherlands, Spain, Portugal and even Belgium.
Although historians can describe in detail the events leading up to the First World War, there continues to be disagreements as to why the war took place and even who was responsible. One of the conclusions I would draw is that the war was one that wasn't prevented rather than one with a real 'casus belli'. It is as if two sets of juggernauts – the Central Powers and the Triple Entente set a course for a head on collision at top speed in a sick game of “Chicken”. Italy decided it didn't want to play this game although in a 'Triple Alliance with German and Austria-Hungary and later joined with the Allies. The Ottoman Empire decided to join the Central Powers as did Bulgaria while Japan and a number of other states joined the side of the Allies including the USA joining the conflict in 1917.
There were more than 37 million casualties with over 16 million deaths and 20 million wounded More than 9 million combatants died and more than 7 million civilians. Many soldiers on both sides disappeared when their bodies were exposed to the annihilating force of high explosives, crushed into the mud by the tracks of tanks, buried as trenches and underground shelters collapsed over them. In a time of living hell, many found their deaths in a final nightmare. The war struck in quite evil ways; not satisfied with civilian deaths through malnutrition, the Greeks, Armenians and Assyrians were the subject of genocide in the Ottoman Empire while in distant Halifax in Canada, 2000 civilians died as the result of a munitions explosion.
As the war drew to a close, a lethal finale would emerge from a major troop staging point and hospital camp in Etaples, France. From its appearance in January 1918 until it run its course in December 1920, Spanish Flu would infect approximately 500 million people around the globe and kill possibly 100 million of them. Because of censorship, the media could not give details of the disease in the warring nations but could report on the impact in neutral Spain and thus the name “Spanish Flu” was acquired.
By Lil_Mo