- Moderator
- #681
High Kings - Green Fields of France
again, the pointless slaughter of WW2
Oh how do you do, young Willy McBride
Do you mind if I sit here down by your graveside
And rest for a while in the warm summer sun?
I've been walking all day, and I'm nearly done.
And I see by your gravestone you were only nineteen
When you joined the great fallen in 1916.
Well I hope you died quick and I hope you died clean.
Or Willy McBride, was is it slow and obscene?
You mean WW1.
Yes WW1 - utterly pointless.
Europeans mocked the American military during the Civil War because of the carnage. But it was at that time of history when the range of rifles jumped from a hundred feet to a thousand feet with rifling. Tactics just had not caught up yet. 50 years later Europe makes the Civil War look like a picnic.
Wasn't WW1 the first for many things - a change from traditional warfare to trench warfare, gas warfare? The last veterans have died - but it still is a haunting war.
WW1 was when war became fully mechanized. All throughout history you had standoff weapons, but it always got down into hand to hand combat. Eventually the combatants ran out of energy and someone was victorious and the killing stopped. With mechanized warfare you just kill and kill with no end.
I think it's also the first war with a lot of photographic coverage too isn't it? There are so many photos.
