The Great War

This is a well written piece by my good friend, Paul Driscoll. It is being shared with his permission. Paul also chose the picture.

“The end of the Great War is largely ignored here in the US, and isn't recognized as a Federal holiday like Memorial Day is in May. It's quite the different attitude in Europe and other parts in the world, where the Great War forever changed the landscapes which are now permanantly scarred with the shell holes and trench lines of over 100 years ago. Unexploded munititions continue to pose a threat in places like France and Belgium, and geopolitically we still live in a world bearing the rotten fruit of the consequences of that war. Nowadays I don't think we do much reflecting on the impact of the Great War and how we live in as much a post-WW1 world as we do a post-WW2 one. 

Personally I'm always inspired by how veterans of the Great War chose to remember it and how the war influenced entire artistic movements in its wake. The Dada and subsequent Surrealist art movements attempted to convey the horror of that war and the existentialist philosophies that stemmed from it and continued to blossom after the Second World War. Some of the greatest anti-war novels of our time were penned in the 1920's and 1930's by veterans such as Remarque and Chevallier. The earliest post-apocalyptic writings also came out of the Great War, as some veterans saw mankind's potential to annihilate itself completely, while other veterans like J.R.R. Tolkien applied their observations and experiences to create fantasy realms who were equally gripped in the throws of total war. The then-burgeoning field of psychology was heavily influenced by the influx of combat veterans suffering from physiological problems caused by "shell shock," and others who were perpetually haunted by nightmares and hallucinations stemming from their traumatic combat experiences. 

And today just as then, we haven't learned any of the lessons of that war. It never was "The War to End All Wars," in fact quite the opposite. The Great War has been the catalyst for many other small and larger conflicts throughout the 20th century and into the 21st. We will always have the scars of the war, and sadly we might continuously be making the mistakes we made back in 1914. 

Lest We Forget.”