World War I: 1914-1918
Wristwatches. Turn-down collars. Trench Coats. World War I left its mark on our modern world in many now-unknown ways. Pilots couldn't be fishing around in pockets to see the time, so they strapped their watches on their arms. And remember those uncomfortable-looking, stiff collars in the old photographs that looked like they'd neatly slice through a man's neck? Those early pilots, in their open-air bi-planes and tri-planes, had to be looking in all directions to find the enemy, so a quick fix was in order. Hey, why not just roll down the collar and re-invent the necktie that kept the shirt closed? Oh, and don't forget the leather aviator jackets that we still wear. Too bad about the goggles and scarf, though . . .
World War I. The Great War. The World War. 10,000,000 military dead, all fighting what they believed would be "The War to End All Wars". The "Central Powers" of the German Empire, Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria, and the Ottoman Empire battled the "Allied Powers" of the British Imperial Forces, the United States, France, Russia, and others. Pneumonia and measles killed many. The 1918 Spanish Influenza epidemic killed even more. The Russian Revolution of 1917 further devastated the military power of Russia.
George M. Cohan wrote "Over There". Billy Mitchell credited "games such as football, baseball, hockey, and polo" for the early pilots' great coordination and sense of teamwork, a winning combination in those first air battles. The Red Baron (the world's greatest ace, in his time) wrote his memoirs. The French "Lafayette Escadrille" boasted fighter pilots such as James Norman Hall (co-author of Mutiny on the Bounty) and Raoul Lufbery. "The trenches" became a household phrase, spawning vocabulary like "trench coats", "trench art", "fighting in the trenches", et al. More than 90,000 men were killed by the German's use of chemical warfare with "mustard gas".
It's hard to imagine people all around us dying from the flu or blinded and blistered by a mustard-gas attack. The military no longer allows whole families (or all of the men in one town) to be deployed together, so we haven't seen the loss of an entire generation of men in a small area.
Perhaps we haven't seen these things first-hand, but we can "see" through the eyes of the people who were there. We can read about their triumphs and their losses. We can feel their pain, as these same people (or their sons) were called to battle the same enemy again, only 20 years later. They had willingly sacrificed everything, believing it to be "the war to end all wars". They thought they were winning peace for their children. They had been deceived, however, and the Germans would shortly launch an even bloodier war. But we'll save that for another page.
For More In-Depth Study
BOOKS
Rickenbacker: An Autobiography (Eddie Rickenbacker)
The Falcons of France (Nordhoff and Hall)
Legion of the Lafayette (Arthur Whitehouse)
The Costs of the World War (John M. Clark)
The Years of the Sky Kings (Arthur Whitehouse)
The First Air War: A Pictorial History (Terry C. Treadwell)
Memoirs of World War I (William Mitchell)
Leaders of the War (Cora
Rowell)
DOWNLOADABLE BOOKS
History of the World War (Francis A. March)
Fighting the Flying Circus (Eddie Rickenbacker)
The Red Battle Flyer (Capt. von Richthofen, Red Baron)
"En L'air!" (In the Air, Bert Hall)
The First Hundred Thousand (Ian Hay)
MOVIE
Sergeant York (1941, Gary
Cooper)
The Fighting 69th (1940, James
Cagney)
Rickenbacker: An Autobiography (Eddie Rickenbacker)
The Falcons of France (Nordhoff and Hall)
Legion of the Lafayette (Arthur Whitehouse)
The Costs of the World War (John M. Clark)
The Years of the Sky Kings (Arthur Whitehouse)
The First Air War: A Pictorial History (Terry C. Treadwell)
Memoirs of World War I (William Mitchell)
Leaders of the War (Cora Rowell)
