We often think of the Great War as a collection of battles or a great political and economic event. And it certainly was. But it was also a great social event. The Great War was, above all, about human beings, their fears and their dreams, their flaws and their qualities, their strength and their powerlessness. It was the first mechanised war, the first industrial war, but naked humanity was at its eart.
WWI exposed the vulnerability of human beings like never before and therefore allowed humanity to come to the fore like it rarely happened before or after.
This is especially epitomised by the soldiers' experience, which then touched all strata and sectors of society. Indeed, the experience of the common soldier and the volunteers who surrounded him – who were, very often women – is at the centre of this book. This is especially about them. Thrown into a situation they had no means to manage effectively, the soldiers in the trenches had to find a way. Sometimes, they had to invent it. Some other times, they had to accept social situations that were considered inappropriate by the society they come from so to have a chance at surviving, not just physically, but also – I would argue, especially – emotionally. The mechanised war stripped them of so many social mores and accepted behaviours that brought them to the very edge of humanity. They had to shed all those cultural structures to look their vulnerability in the face, realise what being human means and find a way to work with that naked humanity.
The book is organised alphabetically. Every word covers an aspect of the Great War that characterised it uniquely. It isn't meant to be exhaustive in any way, but I hope it may help to give a digestible introduction to what was a very complex event in the word history. Such an enigmatic event – as it has been described – that not even historians are yet able to explain it completely.
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