Monday, August 4, 2014

Images from the Past: World War I


I've designated Mondays "historical image day," and while typically this will be an image from American history I wanted to commemorate British entry into World War I, 100 years ago today, with this variation on what Americans have tended to think of as their iconic image!  

We recently returned from two weeks in Britain, and with the centenary of the Great War approaching quite a lot of public attention was focused upon remembrance of this conflict.  A hundred years on, ceremonies are planned and poppies adorn monuments in almost all the towns we visited in England and Wales.  Many of the country's Great War monuments were simply updated with the names of men lost in World War Two.  I was struck by the fact that in most cases, the list from the former was longer than the list from the latter.  Devastating as World War II was to Britain -- and to its Empire -- the sheer numbers lost during World War I beggar belief.

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