I am glad I was not born early enough to fight in the First World War

It would be impossible for you to have been born that early.

Enlisted were treated like cannon fodder. Pretty good Kirk Douglas movie about no mans land called Paths of Glory.

I want to make it to Fleury-devant-douaumont one day. Verdun was absolutely insane.

The recent All Quiet on the Western Front was terrifying

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The deadliest single day loss of life and wounded was on July 1,1916 with the onset of the Battle of the Somme when Britian had 19,240 killed and over 57,000 wounded.

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For the British this is certainly true. However, what people don't realize is that August 22, 1914, was even worse for the French. No one knows exactly how many total casualties there were on that day for the French army, but the number of KIA is fairly certain: 27,000.

People love to give the French shite for World War II but forget that they lost 75,000 men killed in the month of August 1914 alone and still held the line against what was probably the best and most disciplined army on the planet at that time.

My great-grandfather was in the St. Mihiel and Meuse-Argonne offensives towards the end of the war. He breathed in some mustard gas and had lung problems for the rest of his life. His brother was a Navy corpsman and was at Belleau Wood.

My wife’s (no pics) great-grandfather was a medic in the British Army. He was at Gallipoli in 1915, where he was wounded. He was then on the Western Front from 1916 until the end of the war. My father-in-law told me he remembered that his grandpa would jump any time he heard a bang or a crash. Just jump and start looking around with great intensity.

Wife’s great-great uncle was killed at the Battle of the Somme. He was in the West Yorkshire Regiment and is buried in the Regina Trench cemetery in France. Wife’s great uncle was in the Northumberland Fusiliers and became a prisoner of war in early 1917. Towards the end of the war the POW’s were on near starvation rations. My father-in-law said that because of that, his uncle made anyone eating at his house eat everything. There was no wasting food in his household.

I am very fortunate that have known a lot of World War II veterans. I wish I could have known a few from the Great War as well.

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My great-grandfather was in the St. Mihiel and Meuse-Argonne offensives towards the end of the war. He breathed in some mustard gas and had lung problems for the rest of his life.

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Same. Great-grandfather was gassed in meuse-argonne offensive… but the story was that he made out okay bc he climbed a tree and the gas went underneath him.

Those that physically survived did not survive emotionally / physiologically.

Also, so much lead, etc. hit that area the land is actually contaminated.

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Verdun (Meuse Department): The site of the 1916 Battle of Verdun suffered the most catastrophic concentration of shelling, with some areas receiving up to 150 shells per square meter.

The "Dead Villages" of France: Entire communities in the Meuse department—including Beaumont-en-Verdunois, Fleury-devant-Douaumont, Cumières-le-Mort-Homme, Haumont-près-Samogneux, Bezonvaux, and Louvemont—were completely obliterated and never rebuilt because the ground remained too dangerous and toxic.

Spincourt Forest: Located near Verdun, this area contains toxic clearings (such as the local "gas place") poisoned by the post-war destruction of hundreds of thousands of arsenic-filled chemical shells.

Heavy Metals and Toxins: High concentrations of lead, mercury, zinc, and perchlorate from degrading shell casings and explosives continuously leach into local groundwater and ruin adjacent agricultural produce.

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Trench warfare was brutal bullshite. England never recovered

I've been there. This is a better perspective than the second picture:

There is a lot of countryside in Belgium, NL, and France that you can see is still divoted with shell holes after they harvest the crops.