The Great War’s centennial, which starts this month, presents Americans with a fine opportunity to explore the important role their country — and their ancestors — played in that conflict. But there are some challenges: The war happened a hundred years ago and four thousand miles away; and beyond that, it was so, well, great, in every conceivable metric, that it can seem impossible to grasp. You hear things — nearly a million men fell just at Verdun in 1916; in four years, the combatant nations suffered a total of 40 million dead, missing, and wounded; more than 116,000 Americans died in just 19 months; billions of shells and bullets were fired; the map of the entire world was forever redrawn — and you can’t help but wonder: What can I possibly make of this? How do I even begin?

You could start big, at one of the enormous American World War I monuments in France, or one of the vast American cemeteries Over There. Or you could start as small as a single name. There are people who fixate upon MacArthur, or Col. George S. Patton or Capt. Harry S. Truman or Sgt. Alvin C. York, or their own grandfather or uncle or that nice man who used to cut their hair when they were growing up. But you can also just visit one of those American cemeteries — perhaps one of the “smaller” ones, like Belleau Wood (officially known as Aisne-Marne) — and pick one at random. Here you go — Section B, Row 6, Grave 51: Earle W. Madeley. 102 Inf. 26 Div. Connecticut. July 21, 1918. There’s nothing on his marker (or anyone’s) about where or how he died, but history books record that in July 1918, the 102nd Infantry Regiment, part of the 26th Division, was fighting to drive the Germans out of the village of Belleau, just a few hundred yards behind where you’re standing. The stone does mention that Earle W. Madeley was a corporal, probably a man of some initiative, courage, leadership. Perhaps that’s what got him killed.

Image A woman looks over the landscape near a ridge known as the Chemin des Dames. The ridge was the site of terrible fighting during the war. Credit... William Daniels for The New York Times

He and the other 2,287 Americans buried at Aisne-Marne have been gone for nearly a century, but somehow when you stand there, it doesn’t feel that way at all. That’s because there is in France, where William Faulkner’s famous statement that “The past isn’t dead. It isn’t even past” seems insufficient when it comes to ‘14-'18. The French still speak of World War I with such emotion that you’d think it was 1914, not 2014. Mention the war — and in France, “the war” always means ‘14-'18, not ‘39-'45 — and you will hear passionate declamations about generals, tactics, credit, blame, what might have been. Arguments are frequent, and fraught: France lost more than simply a generation of men; in some areas, every last village was destroyed. Many were never rebuilt, though they’re still listed on French maps and still appoint mayors.

You can hire a guide — there are plenty — or just be your own. Step into almost any patch of woods in certain parts of Lorraine or Champagne or Picardy, and you will find lots of trenches and shell holes, even some massive craters. Climb any hill and you may well find pillboxes, bunkers, blockhouses; stroll through any freshly plowed field and you might just spot shrapnel, cartridges and bullets atop the furrows. And maybe a shell.

Don’t touch that last one: It may still be live. Even now, people are being killed and maimed by World War I ordnance. Faulkner wasn’t kidding.

Yes, a century later, America’s Great War is still right there on the surface for you to behold and touch (except for the shells), at Belleau Wood and along the Marne in Champagne, at St.-Mihiel and Meuse-Argonne in Lorraine. But before they fought at those places, Americans — some of the first to arrive in France — spent much of the winter of 1918 in a place that had seen some of the war’s most terrible fighting just the year before, an 18-mile-long ridge in Picardy known as the Chemin des Dames. And it was there that they left a mark unlike any other you will find. They wanted you to find it, too. But you’re going to have to make an effort.