A significant achievement of the human race: It succeeded in banning chemical weapons.

[anneboleyn]

49. I know -- next year will mark a century since the Great War. No more living persons

who served in the war -- I believe the very last survivor was an English woman who served the last year or so of the war, and she was exceptionally humble about her status as the last living WWI vet. She spoke very highly of the young British officers with whom she interacted. She passed away a few years ago, if memory serves, and she had lived to a very, very ripe old age of 110 or so (there is a Wikipedia page listing the last WWI survivors).

I studied some of the "Lost Generation" writing in grad school. I agree with you entirely that WWI literature should be required study for our students even though U. S. involvement was more limited.

England, and of course all countries involved in the war, suffered such brutal results -- they lost that entire generation of brilliant young men (like Wilfred Owen who died shortly before the 1918 armistice). The men who survived, C.S. Lewis, Tolkien (his two best friends died in WWI), and so many others -- on our side of the pond Fitzgerald and Hemingway, were haunted by the war for the rest of their lives.

The war, with all of its horrendous brutality, the machine guns, the mustard gas, the merciless shelling, which many of the men claimed was the worst of all because of the terror it created, should never be forgotten.