World War 1 might be the most fascinating war on record, but so few know anything about it. It’s a conflict that happened 100 years ago, so any sort of public consciousness has withered. EA, producer behind the glorious looking Battlefield 1, gave the idea of a WWI game a staunch no at first, saying that young gamers hadn’t heard of the conflict and that trench warfare couldn’t make for a fun game. In some ways they are correct. Trench warfare sounds like absolute hell on earth and The Second World War burns so much brighter in the memories of people. There are dozens of blockbuster films and games set in WWII but relatively few on WWI. Why is this?

It was a surreal time as the world transitioned from the romantic ideals of warfare into the bloodied churn of industrial leviathans. Cavalry charged against the incredible millions of tons of artillery that pounded entire regions of Europe into desolate moonscapes. A new axis of warfare rose above the battlefields as biplanes and zeppelins brought new forms of death. The dense fog of toxic gasses settled into the trenches. Gas masked men huddled by ladders, waiting for the whistle that would send them headlong into lead curtains provided by powerful machine gun turrets all to try to gain stretches of raw and beaten earth.

To be in those trenches, to see the skies filled with machinations of war and the absolute vaporization of friends under the impact of mortars. To feel the ground shake for weeks at a time as the shelling never ended. Knowing that at Verdun, in the Somme, and in other battlegrounds in lines extending across the whole of Europe, more people were dying in a day than at decisive battles of the past like Waterloo. It’s not just that cities burned, it’s that some were wiped entirely off the map. To those who fought, it would have felt like the end of the world.

Soldiers wandered trenches filled with air they couldn’t breathe in the filth of death and human excrement, and yet they still carried on. How is this not a story that we get to see more? Is it too bleak? Too dark for people to handle? Or is it that we no longer can put faces and names to the storytellers? Will the Second World War fade like this as its last veterans pass? I could call my grandfather right now and hear his stories of the European theater in the 1940s, but so far as I know I never met someone who could even recall their own experience of the First World War.

The idea that this war is passing into statistics without context seems so tragic. The significance of history isn’t just battle timelines or the details of surrender, but the feelings of those who experienced it. The people who endured this near Armageddon deserve to have their stories told and remembered. I’m hoping that people like Dan Carlin, or the developers of Battlefield 1 are able to drag this incredible time period into the light again. Even if these stories only scratch the surface of the First World War, it could inspire people to look deeper and add substance to an otherwise hollow understanding. World War 1 is filled with stories that need to be told and remembered and it’s about time we got more media to help us do it.

If you want to see more of these images, check out this archive from The Atlantic. Some incredible stuff in there.

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Tony Southcotte: Tony hails from the Rocky Mountains somewhere around the state of Colorado. Possibly raised by grizzly bears, this gritty denizen of the arena now spends most of his time grappling with Java updates and dysfunctional RAM. With not much fiction under his belt, it might seem tempting to bet against Mister Southcotte, but an impressive knowledge of everything from PVC pipe to psychedelic drugs makes Tony a storehouse of fiction waiting to hit the paper. Plus, you know, there’s the possibility of him ripping you apart like a grizzly bear.