The sun dries out the poor earth to dust. I don’t know what we will live off. General Karl von Einem, diary entry
My centre is giving way. My right is retreating. Situation excellent. I am attacking. Marshal Ferdinand Foch, September 1914
Every position must be held to the last men: there must be no retirement. With our backs to the wall, and believing in the justice of our cause, each one of us must fight on to the end. Earl Douglas Haig, order to British troops 12th April 1918
The British government warns that if anyone is found taking photographs of the war, they will face the firing squad. British Military Order 1917 No.1137
We all seemed to go crazy for we gave a yell like a bunch of wild Indians and started down the hill running and cursing in the face of the machine-gun fire. Men were falling on every side. But we kept going yelling and firing as we went. William Francis, US marine, memoirs
We threw hand-grenades as if they had been baseballs. A boy next to me threw a hand-grenade hit a tree. It bounced back and exploded. We saw it just in time to hit the bottom of the trench and keep from getting killed. Malcolm D Aitkin, US marine, memoirs
There was ineffable sadness and melancholy. Yet a message of inspiration and hope, as if the spirit of the Unknown Soldier had whispered, Courage, brother. Hope on. Herbert Thompson, blinded during war
I saw again with a pang of anguish the trenches, damp and muddy. And was surprised to have lived there for four years. So moving because of the endless silence, the gloomy, barren deserted look. Old churches chipped, pierced, ripped open. Barbed wire everywhere. Life resumes. Things remain the same. We’re the only ones to have changed. Paul Tuffrau, French officer, diary entry
It is a war against all nations. American ships have been sunk, American lives taken, in ways which it has stirred us very deeply to learn of, but the ships and people of other neutral and friendly nations have been sunk and overwhelmed in the waters in the same way. There has been no discrimination.
The challenge is to all mankind. Each nation must decide for itself how it will meet it. The choice we make for ourselves must be made with a moderation of counsel and a temperateness for judgement befitting our character and our motives as a nation. We must put excited feeling away. Our motive will not be revenge or the victorious assertion of the physical might of the nation, but only the vindication of right, of human right, of which we are only a single champion. Woodrow Wilson, speech to Congress 2nd April 1917
Our object now, as then, is to vindicate the principles of peace and justice in the life of the world as against selfish and autocratic power and to set up amongst the really free and self-governed peoples of the world such a concert of purpose and of action as will henceforth insure the observance of those principles. ibid.
This world must be made safe for democracy. ibid.
We wake up in the middle of the night. The earth booms. Heavy fire is falling on us. We crouch into corners. We distinguish shells of every calibre.
Each man lays hold of his things and looks again every minute to reassure himself that they are still there. The dug-out heaves, the night roars and flashes. We look at each other in the momentary flashes of light, and with pale faces and pressed lips shake our heads.
... The bombardment does not diminish. It is falling in the rear too. As far as one can see spout fountains of mud and iron. A wide belt is being raked.
The attack does not come, but the bombardment continues. We are gradually benumbed. Hardly a man speaks. We cannot make ourselves understood. Erich Maria Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front 1929
They let themselves be mowed down almost without caring. German soldier, cited The First World War: Germany’s Last Gamble
A hundred thousand infantry are standing grimly, silently. Lieutenant-General John Monash, Australian Corps Commander
Many American officers use unauthorised French gas masks. The enlisted men fear this is proof that their US masks are defective. Major Charles E Heller, Reavenworth Papers No. 10 September 2004
Hostilities temporarily cease 11:00 today when all offensive action will cease. Ceasefire order 11th November 1918
On a windswept hill in northern France stands one of the great memorials to the dead from the First World War. It was a war which affected almost every family in Britain, including my own. But even after the Armistice was signed on November 11th 1918 the terrible reality was that soldiers continued to be killed in battle. Michael Palin, Timewatch: The Last Day of World War I, BBC 2008
863 British and Commonwealth servicemen died on the last day of World War One. ibid.
In the years following his death Wilfred Owen’s poetry would symbolise what many considered to be the cruelty and the waste that was the First World War. ibid.
Back in Germany itself revolution was afoot. Soldiers and sailors mutinied and deserted. ibid.
Pockets of German soldiers continued to offer stiff resistance to Canadian troops. ibid.
American troops had suffered over 1,100 casualties crossing the Mers River that morning. ibid.
No photograph of the signing exists. ibid.
Soldiers on all sides would continue to go into action right up to the last minute. ibid.
America suffered nearly 3,000 casualties on the final day of the war. ibid.
Powered flight was just eleven years old when the First World War began. But a dedicated group of men transformed the aeroplane into one of the most important weapons in helping to win that war. Timewatch: WWI Aces Falling, BBC 2009
The top British aces were two little known working class heroes, Edward Mannock and James McCudden. And they were called knights of the sky. ibid.
Shockingly dangerous profession. Of the 14,000 British pilots killed in World War I, over 8,000 died while training. ibid.
But it was the Germans who first adopted an ingenious device that synchronised the machine guns so they could fire between the blade of the propeller. ibid.
The life expectancy of a new pilot in 1917 was just 11 days. ibid.
Aircraft were now being used to support the troops … They were even more vulnerable to attack from the ground. ibid.
And the first of those aces to be brought crashing to the earth was the now infamous German pilot Manfred von Richthofen. ibid.
Major J T Byford McCudden VC DSO and Bar, MC and Bar MM – at the time of his death he was just twenty-three years old. ibid.
Germany Surrenders – Official: The Prime Minister made the following announcement to-day: – The Armistice was signed at Five o’clock this morning, and hostilities are to cease on all Fronts at 11 a.m. to-day. The Evening News 11 November 1918
The most remarkable feature was the uncanny silence. The war was over. English soldier, diary entry
No more slaughter. No more maiming. Mo more mud and blood. No more shovelling bits of men’s bodies and dumping them. Richard G Dixon, British soldier, memoirs
The Germans, if this government is returned, are going to pay every penny; they are going to be squeezed – until the pips squeak. Eric Geddes, speech Cambridge 10th December 1918
One great wave of joy swept round the world and found its way into every nook and cranny. No-one was more delighted than our African soldiers, who cheered themselves hoarse. Lieutenant Frank Stansfield, King’s African Rifles, Uganda
I wept with joy. Five-thousand Indian soldiers lit their torches; the hilltops burst into fire with scores of bonfires. Harold H Hill, British soldier in India
The policy of reducing Germany to servitude for a generation, of degrading the lives of human beings should be abhorrent and detestable. John Maynard Keynes
The First World War was certainly tragic but it wasn’t futile. Dr Gary Sheffield, King’s College London