The countryside today is soft and green, the villages peaceful (and all reconstructed after 1918). Thiepval lies in the valley of the Somme River, athwart the trench lines of the Western Front. On a small hillĪbove the northern French village of Thiepval, 20 miles south of Arras, there is a poignant memorial listing the names of the 70,000 British soldiers missing or unidentified following the battle there in the summer But they pale into relative statistical and human insignificance against the horrors of the earlier conflict. Way away, its echoes only belatedly reaching these shores.īritish military losses in World War II were comparable to those of the United States - 265,000 servicemen and women killed. American involvement in World War I lasted just 19 months as a result, although the rate of American deaths per month was high, the experience was brief. But more Americans were killed in World War II (292,000), and both figures pale beside the casualties of theĬivil War (in excess of 600,000). United States took part in that war and 114,000 American servicemen died - twice the number killed in Vietnam. T is not easy to convey to Americans, especially young Americans, the experience of World War I and its significance for our century. A military historian explains why World War I happened, and how it changed everything.
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