World War I

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row... ~ John McCrae

God would never be cruel enough to create a cyclone as terrible as that Argonne battle. Only man would ever think of doing an awful thing like that. ~ Alvin C. York

Prayer written in German saying “Gott strafe England” (May God punish England) on a wall in France. (1917)

World War I was a world conflict, raging from August 1914 to the final Armistice on November 11, 1918. The Allied Powers, led by the British Empire, France, Russia until March 1918, and the United States after 1917, defeated the Central Powers, led by the German Empire, Austro-Hungarian Empire and the Ottoman Empire.

Quotes

Alphabetized by author

• In Flanders fields the poppies blow
  Between the crosses, row on row,
  That mark our place; and in the sky
  The larks, still bravely singing, fly
  Scarce heard amid the guns below.
  • John McCrae, In Flanders Fields (1915)

• What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?
  Only the monstrous anger of the guns.
  • Wilfred Owen, from Anthem for Doomed Youth

• In war-time the word patriotism means suppression of truth.
  • Siegfried Sassoon in Memoirs of an Infantry Officer

• The First World War killed fewer victims than the Second World War, destroyed fewer buildings, and uprooted millions instead of tens of millions — but in many ways it left even deeper scars both on the mind and on the map of Europe. The old world never recovered from the shock.
  • Edmond Taylor, in The Fossil Monarchies

• God would never be cruel enough to create a cyclone as terrible as that Argonne battle. Only man would ever think of doing an awful thing like that. It looked like "the abomination of desolation" must look like. And all through the long night those big guns flashed and growled just like the lightning and the thunder when it storms in the mountains at home.
  And, oh my, we had to pass the wounded. And some of them were on stretchers going back to the dressing stations, and some of them were lying around, moaning and twitching. And the dead were all along the road. And it was wet and cold. And it all made me think of the Bible and the story of the Anti-Christ and Armageddon.
  And I'm telling you the little log cabin in Wolf Valley in old Tennessee seemed a long long way off.
  • Alvin C. York, in his account of 7 October 1918, in the Diary of Alvin York

• Gott strafe England.
  • May God punish England.
  • A common slogan of the German Army, attributed to Ernst Lissauer.