The Great War (as it was called) began in the summer of 1914 and finished in November 1918. The conflict between the Allies and Central Powers involved more than 70 million military personnel, including 60 million Europeans.
More than 9 million combatants were killed, with barbed wire a significant hindrance to mass infantry advances, machine gun fire rattling day and night, and poisonous gases, causing slow and painful deaths.
The Battle of the Somme begun on 1 July 1916, and on that first day, the British suffered some 60,000 casualties, including 20,000 dead. The entire Somme offensive cost the British Army almost half a million men. Captain Robert Graves was there, and lived…just.