I have written about the First World War before in this blog but a TV documentary about the fighting has once again appalled and moved me to write on the subject anew.
I think that it is the extremely high level of death, violence, sacrifice of life and seemingly total inconsideration, heartlessness and callousness by those "in charge" for human life that is so shocking. One is forced to realize that these people - and there must have been actual people in charge who made these decisions - did not view a solider as a living being with a soul and a right to live his life on this earth but rather as a commodity to be expended to the point of being killed if it was in the interest of strategy or policy.
It seems that if incidents or events lie more than 30 years in the past, we have a problem remembering them. Even in this age of image documentation (film, photographs) and recording of sound and vision, nobody actually remembers anything very much about the First World War, or of any individual events occurring in its duration and it is spoken of very little. The point is mainly, I think, that it has been completely eclipsed by that other terrible event, the Second World War, which is documented to a much greater degree, is still in the memories of many living people and to which even some level of glamor, thrill and excitement is attached.
